


The Sorites Paradox

by tripodion



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Angels & Demons, Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Supernatural, Demons, Fallen Angels, M/M, Monsters, Supernatural Elements, Werewolves, Wingfic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-07-01
Updated: 2016-12-05
Packaged: 2017-11-08 18:00:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 28
Words: 63,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/445936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tripodion/pseuds/tripodion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Something heavy lands in front of him, splashing in the puddled water, and Sherlock is thrown off his feet, his face roughly smacking the rain slicked street. He raises his head off the wet pavement. He must have hit it harder than he presumed. Because now there is an angel in front of him.</p><p>He says his name is John.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. sheol

His heart is perfunctory.

His heart is empty.

Blood still runs through it. Its muscles still move of their own volition. He never cared enough to try and control it. But it is an alien to him. A foreign thing trapped in the dark underground, lurching through high waves and soundless wind in a blur of days, never knowing when it might have light shine upon it, never knowing if it will feel fresh air pass over it so it lies in stale dormancy. He _knows_ how it works, knows what nerves and thousands of years of biology and hardwired evolution have layered upon each other to create.

But he does not  _understand_.

It is pointless. It has a function, which it performs perfectly. It keeps him alive.

Yet it makes him hurt. A deep pain shudders through him at night, somewhere in his body that is not moulded of sinewy muscle or thick blood. Somewhere hollow and cold and it  _hurts_ , it hurts so much. A cold splinter digging its way into him with every breath, sharp ends slicing off and spreading. One night he'd lie there and it would hurt in every inch of his body, it would consume him, and he hoped it would crystallise him like ice if it meant he stopped feeling it.

If he was any form of religious, he would say it hurt in his soul.

His soul. Little bits of morality and humanity that build together to create something that makes him unique. A special little snowflake.

He wondered how many things he could delete before striking out his soul entirely. First patience, then sympathy, then politeness, then kindness… (Fa1 then Fa2 then Fa3, etc. until the conditional is negated).

Math; so practical. He'd never delete that. It was organisation at its finest.

It was not enough, though. Formulas, equations, paradoxes…nothing could fill the silent stillness of his flat. His home, his cave, his palace; he could roll the stone before his door and no one could bother him if he didn't want it. So empty. It usually didn't bother him and he made a point not to be there if he could stand to be anywhere else, anywhere more exciting.

Tonight was no exception.

Art thieves were the more careless breed of robbers. They figure no one ever misses an old piece of Grecian pottery or a lesser painting. How pedantic.

There is a storm over London, just as there is seemingly every night lately. Rain is no stranger here, but it's becoming a familiar friend that invites itself over one time too many. 

His heel catches the edge of a puddle as he bolts through an alleyway almost a block from where he suspects the thieves are hiding. Lestrade had asked him to wait until they got a warrant but that was the beauty of vigilantes; they could circumvent the law. Not that Sherlock was looking into trading his coat for tights.

Lightning cracks through the sky but it seems closer, almost as if it's coursing through the streets and veins of London like electricity through wires.

The world seems to burst into the brightest white, as if it's split open.

There's a high pitched screech, like car brakes, like a child crying, like something falling through the air at a high velocity.

Something  _heavy_  lands in front of him, splashing in the puddled water, and Sherlock is thrown off his feet, his face roughly smacking the rain-slick street.

Slowly, he raises his head off the wet pavement, ears ringing with that high white sound. His hair is matted to his temple where he fell, but he can't tell if it's from blood or rainwater.

He must have hit it harder than he presumed.

Because now there is an angel in front of him.

He says his name is John.

* * *

He doesn't look like an angel, or at least not from what Sherlock can see from his position, but everything in him, around him, about him, screams at Sherlock that this being in front of him must be one.

His feet are scaly in soft places like the skin of his ankles or the flat plains of his metatarsals, with small stray tufts of down poking out, yet his toes are inertly human, albeit slightly pointed like talons. Just behind his Achille's tendon Sherlock can see the soft, fine edges of folded wings brushing his calves. They look to be coloured a warm sienna brown with veins of ochre flowing through them and the illusion is not dissimilar to the tree bark of redwoods.

He looks human. Cropped hair the colour of desert sand, blue eyes, a face cut from gentleness.

"My name is John." The angel repeats, his head cocking curiously to one side as if Sherlock is a question he doesn't understand.

"Yes, you said that already." Sherlock says in spite of himself.

"And I'm going to repeat it until you tell me yours. My name is John."

"Sherlock. " He says, eyes fixated on the talons that rise and tick against the wet asphalt almost unconsciously. "My name is Sherlock Holmes."

John offers his hand, wholly human and warm, and Sherlock takes it.

"Sherlock Holmes." John repeats. His smile radiates something Sherlock can't name. "I've been waiting for you for a long time. I think we need to go somewhere less wet and well lit."

* * *

They are in the first place Sherlock can find, which isn't a coincidence. Angelo owed him a favour.

Sherlock stares at the angel—John—over his steepled fingers as he consumes tagliatelle like its manna from heaven. Angelo's food exceeds the average palette, but this is…over-excessive enjoyment. He's never seen anything like this. Anything like John.

So many questions.

 _Who are you, what are you, can you fly, are you often mistaken by a butcher for a runaway chicken and if so what is the outcome, am I the only one who can see you, why are you here, where did you come from and does it change with different faiths or nonbelievers_ —

John looks up at him and sets his fork down as his face scrunches in mild bemusement. In the light, Sherlock can see faint swirls and smudges of black beneath John's skin, almost like veins, as if someone had drawn on his insides with a pen. His wings flutter happily in the warm cosiness of their booth, shaking off the dark rainwater.

"That's an awful lot of questions." He says, smiling before he takes a sip of water (he politely refused a glass of the wine Angelo brought out; if angels had anything going for them in Sherlock's opinion, at least they had some semblance of manners).

Sherlock stares at him. He feels a sudden panic at the prospect of nothing in his mind ever being  _his_  and his alone ever again.

"Can you hear me?" He asks, his voice too hoarse for his liking. "My thoughts?"

"A little." John admits. "But it's more similar to intuition. I have an idea of what you're thinking, not the actual thought itself. It's like a blind man dreaming of colours; he knows them, but has no names to call them by. It's not quite unlike empathy, in a way."

"Can you do that too?"  _Could you make the pains in my chest that come in the night go away, if I asked?_

John doesn't answer him.

"Is London always like this?" He asks serenely, as if he's just entered a wonderful dream. London is nobody's wonderful dream. Sherlock needs to pop that bubble as soon as he can.

"Dreary and dark? Unfortunately."

"But there's nowhere else like it. It's the only city on Earth that's all its own." John smiles. "I like Earth. Earth is big and alive and green."

"Where…where are you from?"

John stares at him. His eyes are blue, the colour of the high-salinity Italian seas that Sherlock's only seen in pictures but harbours a childhood envy of.

"The desert." He answers solemnly. In the dim light, quietly hidden in the shadows of their booth, the blackness in his veins is muted, less noticeable.

"Why did you leave?"

"I didn't have a choice, really." John shrugs nonchalantly, but Sherlock can tell he's lying. Too many questions though. He'll ask again later.

"What are you?" Sherlock breathes and John smiles, the true, kind smile which Sherlock's only seen in his dreams, flashes of soft light that pass over him like lights shining on a car driving down the highway at night. It makes him feel warm, safe, untouchable. He's consumed by the feeling that this being—that John would die for him if he had the chance.

"What culturally designated name do you want to call me?" John asks as he takes another bite of food. "Because they have a habit of changing."

"An angel." Sherlock answers immediately. "But…that doesn't seem right. It feels  _wrong_  to call you that. You have wings, yes, but that's no guarantee that you are what you appear to be. And furthermore since I don't believe in angels—or in any religion—there's no way that you can be what I think you are. You could be an experiment in genetics—and I wouldn't put that one past the government to try—but you seem to know a lot about me that I haven't told you, so you're either very good at guessing…" Sherlock stares at him. "Or something else entirely."

John grins and chews his pasta carefully before replying.

"You're correct, in a way." He says, gathering the condensation from his water onto his fingers. "And I'm sure that's something you hear constantly, so that's just falling on deaf ears I suppose—"

"Ah, wrong." Sherlock says, almost in reflex.

"Sorry?"

"Hardly anyone ever tells me I'm right. Usually their pride gets in the way."

"Or your ego beats them to it and they're too humiliated to praise you."

Sherlock smiles.

"Sometimes. Once again you demonstrate your habit of knowing things about me that no one else has the privilege to."

"You are right, though. I'm not an angel. We used to be called Nephilim." John says, leaving Sherlock's pseudo-accusation unacknowledged. "Sons of fallen angels and children of mortal women. By-products of not-quite-holy unions that began when lesser angels were sent to Earth to teach humans the truths of your world, although no one seemed to take into account just how beautiful human beings are, how warm and…" John swallows. "Alluring. The women called to them like water on a hot day, and their offspring suffered for it. Those born from the unions were known for their great strength and greater cruelty."

"You said 'used to be'." Sherlock says. "What changed?"

"After the Earth had paid its price with our hunger, we were banished to the desert." John answers. "The ultimate and primordial punishment. Bloated bellies shrivelled, throats wrung themselves out, brother turned on brother, all of that lovely canonical wrath. The newer Nephilim like myself, the ones too young to know the word cruelty much less the idea, were tossed into the sand and raised in the shadow."

"The shadow of what?"

John stares through the rain-flecked window into the wet streets for a moment.

"Glory." He says solemnly.

"What are you called now?"

John smiles a little half-smile, one of childlike fondness.

"I like the Arabic word the best; it has the most colour." He looks at Sherlock. "Zamzama; 'to thunder' or 'to murmur'. A paradox. One word that means its opposite."

"Yes, there was certainly lots of thunder when you arrived here." Sherlock says dryly and John laughs.

"Tell me, Sherlock Holmes," John says after a moment, his eyes bright. "How can you justify my existence when you don't believe in the forces that brought me here?"

Sherlock stares at him for a beat.

"I haven't figured that part out yet." He admits quietly. "What force are you referring to?"

"A higher one, in generalised terms." John smiles. "It likes to appear as what the individual perceives it to be. It's called Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Shintoism, the solar system, science." John wants to bottle the surprise on Sherlock's face. "You call it epiphanies. I call it outside help."

Sherlock is looking at him like he's answered something of vital importance.

"When we get back to my flat," He says monotonously. "We're going to have a very long talk."

"Why not here? And what makes you think I'm going back to your flat with you?"

"Because the couple two tables over are suffering from a bad habit of eavesdropping and do you really have anywhere else to go?"

A slow grin comes to John's face.

"Lead the way."

As they leave, Sherlock glances to John's seat, which should be slick with rainwater that was dripping from his wings.

The seat is dry.

* * *

When they exit the restaurant, the storm has slowed to a wet dampness that pervades and soaks into every exposed pore in a way that only London rain can accomplish, pregnant with the grime of a dozen centuries.

Sherlock looks over to John as he pulls on his gloves.

"What—um—what about your wings?"

John looks over his shoulder.

"What about them? Do they bother you?"

"No," Sherlock admits, "But it might the rest of London. We don't get angels much here."

"Yes, you do." John says, leaving the statement unexplained. "And no one else can see these except for you. I appear to you as I want to, and to everyone else as they want to see me."

"What if they want to see you with your wings?"

"Then let them. But humans don't often go out of their way to see realities they don't believe in."

"Why can I see them then?"

"Maybe you believe in angels."

"Highly illogical."

John looks at him a moment and grins.

"Well then maybe you're just a madman, Sherlock Holmes."

* * *

John sits in the fat ugly chair that Sherlock's never liked, an opinion that is rapidly reversing as he see John sigh and settle against it, his wings folding against the cushions.

"What do you want to know then?" John asks, bringing his knees to his chest and locking his arms around them.

Sherlock leaned forward, his fingers steepled.

"The desert. Tell me about it."

John shuts his eyes.

"There are many names for it. Hades. Xibalbá. Kalichi. Hell." His eyes open dart to Sherlock's. "We call it Sheol. Hebrew for 'pit of the dead'. The accuracy is stunning—considering no human has been there—since it really is a pit." He says, trying to smile but it looks strained.

"What is it like?" Sherlock asks a little breathless from curiosity, from the temptation of learning things that no human aside from himself knows about.

"It's dark, but there is no night. No dawn either, just…heat." John says, his eyes unfocused as he recalls the memories. His wings twitch. "Sheol is a place where you forget the lightness of being, of your own existence, where happiness evaporates into the air like water. There's an inescapable fire, like you've been stuffed in an oven. The bones of your family rot around you, bleached from the sun. As soon as you forget how hot it is, you remember again and there's no shade anywhere, so you can only know yourself enough to recognise that you're suffering…" His voice is empty, hollow and blank from thinking of a life once lived and Sherlock doesn't want to hear it anymore. Hopes he'll never live it again.

"How did you really get here?"

"Honestly?" John grins, but it fades as he looks into the fire. "I was summoned."

"Summoned?"

John nods. "But I don't know on whose orders."

"Do you know why?"

"I have an idea." John says, but he doesn't elaborate.

The hours pass in easy conversation. Sherlock doesn't want to spoil this new mystery just yet. His questions are careful, prodding and poking, but not digging, not the desperate clawing that he wants.

John yawns and Sherlock ushers him to his room. He doesn't complain. A good sign.

They lie on Sherlock's bed, John clothed in his old pyjamas, facing each other.

Sherlock manages to voice nearly every question that had come into his mind since seeing John. His name is John—just John—, he is not human but not entirely inhuman either (he's not sure where the heap becomes a heap exactly), John can fly, but his fall injured his left wing so he doesn't want to try for fear of worsening it, he's here (and isn't that all that matters), he comes from the desert (the faith doesn't change the setting, John says), and Sherlock is the only one who can see his wings that he knows of.

The light in Sherlock's room is muted and dim, shadows rising and peaking around them like mountains.

"Who sent you, John, really?" Sherlock asks softly.

"No," John laughs gently, "I don't answer to anyone, if that's what you're wondering. No God's will and all that. That's another department, I guess." He drops his gaze.

"You want to say something." Sherlock says, his eyes darting over John's face. "Say it."

"I think—" John sighs then brings his eyes to meet Sherlock's. "I think I was meant to look over you. Watch you."

"Someone must have hated you, then." Sherlock mutters dryly and John smiles. "Still doesn't explain what you are though. Have you considered that you're a fallen angel? The punishment seems fitting enough; being my handler. Only a vengeful god would have that kind of humour."

John lets his smile simmer before it fades.

"Have you heard of intelligent design?" He asks softly.

Sherlock nods. "An excuse used by religious intolerants to explain  _magical_  things like sunrises or fetal development or a rainbow when they don't want to explain it or learn the knowledge themselves."

"Something too beautiful and intricate to trace the origins of." John murmurs. "I think that's what I am. What I'm from. Something beautiful. A fractal existence with no beginning or end, born from itself…like a Mobius strip. Not that it explains everything, of course."

"It explains nothing." Sherlock replies curtly, his fingers brushing John's cheek. "How will I ever know what you are?"

John chuckles. "Like you want all your questions to be answered? Where would that leave you, Sherlock? Bored, jaded, full but not fulfilled. Empty." He rolls onto his back and shuts his eyes. "Let's leave this one a mystery, for your sake."

"I don't want to always wonder what sent you to me."

"Or you can enjoy me while I'm here."

"Won't you always be?" Sherlock asks quietly.

John is asleep.

* * *

A week passes. Sherlock stays at the flat as much as he can, something he's never done before. But John is there. He likes that, but it scares him that he doesn't know how long that smile will be there for him to enjoy.

John laughs at his dry jokes. John indulges Sherlock's ravage desire for Indian food after a case, laughing as he throws bits of naan at him. John watches movies with an infectious interest (Sherlock notes that John quickly develops an interest in Bond movies, but he tends to watch John more than the actual movies). John makes him tea. John stands behind him and hugs him with arms that bespeak of quiet strength (he learns not to hold the tea when he does this after the first time). John lets Sherlock touch his wings, lets him ask his questions, lets him measure the wingspan and each feather's length and his reflexes when he senses danger behind him.

During the day, he never thought he'd smile as much as he did, or even tolerate someone else so much.

At night, he wakes up in a cold sweat thinking that John is, quite simply, too good to be true.

Sherlock comes home from Bart's on the seventh day to find an empty flat. He knows exactly where John is, however, and opens the door to his room.

John sits in the sunshine in the middle of Sherlock's duvet, eyes shut and wings folded. He stands in the doorway, peering down at the psuedo-angel and he already knows he wants to see nothing else when he comes home. He always wants John to be in his sight when he opens this door.

"The sun is different here." John murmurs, eyes still shut. "It's dimmer, muted, but it gives you life, not burns it out of you like mine does...you're hovering."

"Your point?"

"Come here. I know you want to." His wings flutter softly, kicking up dust into the dying sunlight.

"Do you?" Sherlock asks, trying to keep his voice calm, unaffected.

"Yes, I do." John answers calmly. "I also know what's been bothering you all day. So come on."

Sherlock slinks off the doorframe and over to John. Wordlessly, he climbs into his lap, wrapping his long arms around John's bare shoulders, resting his wrists on the velvety coracoids of the beginning of John's wings. John's hands come across each other to lay over Sherlock's ribcage as miles of leg close over his waist. Soundlessly, John's wings come up and close around them, ensconcing them both in a cocoon of quiet stillness.

"Do you want to tell me about it?" John asks with a soft smile as Sherlock lays his forehead against his own.

"The Sorites Paradox." Sherlock says quietly, eyes shut. "A grain of sand does not constitute a heap of sand, nor does five or ten or a hundred, yet when you have a heap of sand you cannot determine at which grain it became a heap. You can take it apart bit by bit, but you can never know when the heap becomes a pile until you're down to the last grain again. A question with no end."

John does not respond, but his warm hands, calmly stilled over Sherlock's lean sides, make him continue.

"I've never loved anyone." He says softly. "And I don't know when I started loving you, or if I do. But I know that I—I don't want to live a life that you're not in."

"I can't promise you that I'll stay." John admits.

"Why? What are you so sure is out there that will take you from me?"

They open their eyes and look at each other.

"I want some tea." John mutters, carefully untangling himself from Sherlock and standing, stretching his arms over his head so the skin of his ribs are pulled taunt and his wings elongate.

Sherlock follows him into the kitchen.

"John—"

"Do you remember," John asks, tapping the electric kettle. "When I first heard this as it boiled?"

Sherlock nearly smiles. "Of course. You tried to smite it with a kitchen knife."

"Yes." John replies, his eyes shutting as steam whistles from the kettle. "I thought it was something else. Something I didn't want to come anywhere near you."

"What did you think it was?"

"Nachash." John hisses.

"What?"

"The snake." He whispers. "In the Garden of Eden, the snake spoke to Eve and made her eat the apple and banish humanity from the garden forever."

"The relevance here has gone right over my head, John—"

"The snake wasn't a snake." John murmurs. "It was a man...well, it took the form of a man. Nachash, Hebrew for 'shining enchanter'. Created by Elohim before Adam to be above the race of man and destined to be the enemy of the children of Eve, the enemy of you, of humanity. If you take into account the angels breeding with human women like rabbits, then that makes him my enemy as well. Your kind was born with choice, you can  _choose_  what your path is, but Nachash made it a mixed blessing. He began to tempt your ancestors, made their thoughts bleed with vice until you knew what sin was. He robbed you of your purity. "

Sherlock draws his knees to his chest as he watches John steep their tea then sit it in front of him as he walks into the sitting room and takes the opposite chair.

"Who is he?"

" _What_  would be a better term." John says, taking a sip from his cup. "He's not much of anything, and certainly not human. He'd destroy himself if he had any traces of humanity in him."

"What is he, then?"

"He is an ancient evil." John says quietly. "Cunning, smart, and just bored enough to put them to use. He talked his way out of Sheol, if that tells you anything."

"You knew him there?"

"No, but no one leaves without evoking the envy of the others, and if there's one thing that binds the Nephilim together, it's their collective fury. Like a mob or...football hooligans."

"That's redundant, John. What will happen to you if you go back?"

John doesn't answer for a moment.

"Nothing good." He says finally.

"On a scale of sacrificial lamb to Lucifer, how evil is he…it?"

"So evil that he single-handedly took Paradise away from you, from humanity, because he thought it would be fun."

Sherlock stares at him silently, his eyes darting over John's face.

"No, he didn't. Not from me."

John glances at him and Sherlock does not miss the smile that ghosts over his face.

"I don't want to go back there; to Sheol." John says, tracing the rim of his cup. "I like what I have here."

"I'm…I'm quite fond of sharing a flat. And that's the only time those words will ever be in that particular order."

"Sherlock." John says softly. "I know."

Sherlock stares at him. "This...is not the usual protocol I take in normal relationships."

"Well that's good, considering that neither of us are normal or follow protocol."

"I'm...I'm not sure what to do." He says hurriedly, as if he's forcing the words out before he can stop.

"It's alright." John murmurs, a slow smile coming to his face. "It's alright. You don't have to be sure all the time. It means you're human."

"Do you know how this ends then?"

"No." John says sombrely. "But I'm here for you now."

"Sure of that, are you?"

John laughs, taking Sherlock's hand in his.

"Yes."

Sherlock does not voice his true fear.

_How long?_

John is his small kindness, his candlelight in the undulating darkness.

He doesn't want to be left to the night again.

His heart is perfunctory.

His heart is filling.


	2. the stoic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mycroft stops by for a visit. This angel is a product of Sherlock's drug abuse, a hallucination at best. He is not prepared for what he finds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "'Tis pride, rank pride, and haughtiness of soul; I think the Romans call it stoicism"
> 
> -Joseph Addison

 

* * *

Mycroft does not approve of John.

In Sherlock's opinion, this is nothing shocking, as Mycroft never approves of anything unless it concerns Queen and Country or chocolate cake.

He arrives to find this John—the supposed  _angel_  his brother regards so highly—sitting perched on a hand-me-down chair Mycroft gave to Sherlock as a house warming present (Sherlock at the time did not consider 221B to be either a home nor warm). As soon as his brother curtly answered his routine check-up calls with the statement that he had a handler, that his name was John and that he was an angel, Mycroft assumed Sherlock had finally taken one gram of cocaine too much and promptly quit his work in the middle of the day to hasten to his flat.

John looks up at him and smiles. Mycroft smells his mother's perfume and his father's study (he would reach the higher books so Sherlock could catalogue their scent), smells linen drying in the summer wind (Sherlock, the amateur geologist, would find rocks to add to his collection, which he kept next to his wooden sword and eyepatch), and he feels safe. He feels home.

He discounts it as heartburn. He rushed his lunch, as Sherlock rang him in the middle of it.

Sherlock is not here now, however. Most curious.

John speaks first.

"Molly called." He says. "A new corpse arrived at the morgue with no identifying cause of death. Christmas come early."

John knows how to read him, how to answer a question he didn't ask.

"Indeed." Mycroft replies. His voice sounds sour. He doesn't know why. Filial bonds flaring protectively perhaps.

"Would you like some tea?" John asks, uncrossing his legs. "Sherlock had the last of the Earl Grey, but I think we have some vanilla chai left; wonderful stuff, tea—"

He stands. For a moment, the light catches his back and Mycroft almost believes that he sees sunlight glancing off smooth dark feathers like polished wood. But the bookshelf is behind him and clearly it was what caught his eye.

"No thank you. I don't intend on staying long." Mycroft responds, his careful eyes following the man now straining to reach the top shelf of the cupboard. He is so _ordinary_ , so menial, so soft, where is the halo, where is the sword with which to smite the wicked, what of the beatific expression, and where are the wings—?

"Sherlock told you, didn't he?" John sighs as he flips on the kettle.

"He informed me that he found a flatmate. He seems to be suffering under the delusion that you're supernatural." Mycroft says, smiling the grin used by a suffering parent to pacify a crying child.

John stares at him for a moment before leaning over the countertop as he toys with a beaker of Sherlock's.

"When you were a boy, you believed in angels." John murmurs softly, his whisper almost drowned by the sound of the kettle. Mycroft nearly thought he hadn't heard him correctly. "You would read outside under a tree as you watched over Sherlock as he did what he does best, investigate and discover, and when you'd feel the summer breeze—it always came along so coincidentally— you liked to think that it was the brush of angel's wings as they flew past. You wondered if they had chariot races." John says with a huff of laughter. "When you lost something valuable—or usually when Sherlock did—you would pray at night for an angel to find it for you and if it would turn up you promised to always believe in them. You always found those lost things, didn't you?"

John stares at him with sympathetic eyes, as if he's an old friend, as if he's known Mycroft all his life—

_No. This is…this is impossible._

John continues, pouring the hot water into his cup.

"But you stopped praying; you had school to go to, books to read, things to do and people to meet. You learned about the Coriolis Effect, about air pressure and geostrophic wind and things that had nothing to do with angels or theology and everything to do with science. But then one day someone rang you up and told you that your brother was found unconscious in a pool of vomit with his arm bound by a belt you once got him that was now too big for his waist. On the way to the hospital, you prayed. You asked for your lost thing to be found. Some would say you stopped praying because you didn't believe anymore,"—here John smiles warmly—"I think you just never had a good enough reason to with things that didn't involve Sherlock."

Mycroft stares at him. He wonders who told him all these things. How he knows.

"Of course, wherever he's concerned, you're always wary. Always…sceptical. I'm not surprised. That your brother would call you suddenly and proclaim that he had proof of something you always dreamed existed; it was too good to be true, wasn't it?" John drags his teabag from the mug and lets it drip into the steaming tisane. "Five minutes ago, you walked in here thinking that the safety you felt was indigestion. Now you wonder if I really am what Sherlock claims me to be." John grins as he stirs his tea. "Do you still believe he's delusional?"

Mycroft has nothing to say. There isn't a bookshelf behind John to which he can discount the coloured wings he now sees. They aren't even remotely the same shade of dark brown.

John pulls out a chair and offers it in front of him.

"You may want to sit down. We've got a lot to talk about." He says, smiling humbly. "I'm sorry we didn't invite you to the chariot races. They were a lot of fun."

Mycroft  _really_  has nothing to say.

John's smile widens.

"How do you take your tea?"

* * *

Mycroft learns a few things that day.

Namely that John is not, strictly speaking, an angel. He is a Watcher, similar to a guardian angel, born from the light of the stars and banished to the desert for sins he did not commit (he asks who banished them; John says he doesn't know, says that it was always that way for him, that the Nephilim's memories were scorched by the sun so they had none to pass onto their children).

He asks what sent John to London. John doesn't know.

Mycroft learns that John doesn't know a lot of things.

John doesn't know how to use the Underground. He doesn't know the difference between proper public dress and a bathroom towel. He doesn't know how laptops work (Mycroft watches him attempt to type an email; horrendous). He doesn't know why he was sent to Sherlock specifically. He doesn't know how long he'll be here.

That worries Mycroft the most; that what may very well be the best thing in his brother's life may soon be gone and he'll be left on shaky ground when he had wobbly knees to begin with.

"Isn't there anything you can do to ensure that your presence here is more…permanent?"

"Trust me, if there was," John frowns, "I would have already taken care of it."

Mycroft looks at him, truly looks, and he sees something promising. Something worth having around.

"Do you honestly believe that you were sent here to protect him? To watch over Sherlock?" He asks, taking a sip of tea and wishing once more that he wasn't on a no-sugar diet.

"Yes." John answers without hesitating.

"Then see that you do so."

"I will." John swears solemnly, and Mycroft knows he can be taken at his word. "But, you should know, that you are not the highest authority here. If Sherlock is hurt under my watch, I'll have others to answer to. I'm afraid you won't get to extort your vengeance on me when you're caught in the rush of the rest."

"Revenge is personal; justice is societal."

"You're saying you wouldn't want revenge?"

"No, I'm merely saying that I would prefer revenge since what led you here can apparently take you back. I don't have the power to send you away; that's Sherlock's decision, and I would favour that it remains his, not someone else's'." Mycroft stares at him for a moment, his fingers tapping the arm of the chair. "Who do you answer to, John?"

John looks into his empty cup and frowns, but whether it is at the question or simply the lack of tea Mycroft doesn't know.

"Myself."

"Perhaps I should rephrase the question." Mycroft sighs. "Who will make sure you are punished if Sherlock is hurt under your guard?"

"Myself." John repeats, but at Mycroft's exasperation he adds: "Although there is a higher justice, if that's what you're getting at. It's not one defined thing, though. It's…vast, it's great and big and absolute."

"How are you so sure? Did you experience this yourself?"

"The universe had to be built on some detailed plan, didn't it?" John grins. "There's got to have been something to keep it in check, to balance everything out.

"And this place, this desert—"

"Sheol."

"Yes, Sheol." Mycroft says it with all the dismissiveness of the feeling of admitting he was wrong. "I find it hard to conjure up a desert in the middle of space—" He stops as John starts to laugh.

"S-sorry," John wheezes, wiping at his eyes. "Sorry, just the imagery of it all is—ha—it's so funny—a desert…in  _space_ —"

Mycroft looks like he's bitten into a lemon.

"Yes, well." He says in a clipped tone. "This  _Sheol_. If it's not in space, then is it a planet? Are you extra-terrestrial?"

John's eyes widen.

"Oh, wouldn't that be cool if I was?" He asks excitedly. "Imagine that, alien comes to Earth but its mistaken for a religious icon and the masses latch onto it, call it an angel and a blessing from God, and they don't even know what they're really seeing." He sighs. "Too bad that's technically already happened once. The higher-ups would never let it come about again if they could help it."

Mycroft chooses to overlook this new question in favour of another.

"Does Paradise exist, John?"

"If it does," John chuckles hollowly, "I didn't know it. If Sheol is Paradise, I think your lot has been working towards the wrong goal."

"Is there a goal?"

"I don't know." John says, his ever repetitive mantra. But Mycroft allows it, for everything afterwards is usually interesting. "But if it makes you a good person, does it matter?"

"I'm glad you brought that up." Mycroft smiles grimly. "My brother. He is not, technically speaking, a  _good_  person. He lies, he steals, he's fond of drug or stimulant dependency, he's possessive, he's cold and cruel and deceitful, and he considers it a compliment to be called inhuman. What lies in his heart that makes you so sure that he's the one you need to protect?"

John stares at Mycroft for a moment before a knowing grin comes to his face.

"Your brother…he has the brain of a scientist, of a…a philosopher—and yet he elects to be a detective. What might you deduce about his heart?"

"I don't know."

"Neither do I. But, initially, he wanted to be a pirate. Did you know that?"

"Of course I did. He wanted to be many things."

"I can deduce your heart too, Mycroft Holmes." John murmurs. His wings flutter, catching the light. "So heavy, so burdened, but strong. Atlas is in your chest and you never even realised how much weight it can hold. I know that, initially, you wanted to be a judge in Parliament. Not because you liked the wigs or the idea of justice, although you admired both those things, but because if Sherlock pirated his way into jail, you would have the power to bail him out."

John smiles.

"You Holmes' may be strangers to the world, but I am not made from this earth. I can see you, for what you are, no matter what you claim to be."

Mycroft feels exposed. He doesn't like it. Soft tenderness is left to the elements when there should be iron.

"Stoicism doesn't have to work all the time." John says softly and Mycroft feels a cornered irritation swell up in that soft tender place.

"How has it worked for you? Still number one up there?" He asks, tongue barbed.

John is nonplussed.

"It got me here, didn't it?"

Sherlock comes home in the middle of their conversation. He seems surprised that Mycroft would take his claim seriously, or at least enough to leave his chair and investigate it himself. Mycroft notices that his brother looks at John like a toy he doesn't feel particularly inclined to share; like he thinks Mycroft will take him away.

Well. He sees his presence is more of a hindrance than a help now.

After Mycroft leaves, Sherlock questions John in ways that would make the Spanish Inquisition proud, and John responds with his usual calmness. No, Mycroft just wanted to talk. He didn't offer me anything. I wouldn't have said yes if he did. Are you hungry?

Sherlock teaches John how to make crêpes that night, since basic ingredients are all he has in his cabinets and his mother though her sons deserved at least an amateur knowledge of French cooking.

John gets three stuck to the ceiling before he can get the flipping down right. He smears the blackberry filling on his cheek. Sherlock wants to lick it off. He wants to see what John tastes like. He wants to swallow him whole, to consume him, his very being, so no one else can have him. He found him that night. John is his. Not Mycroft's. Not anyone else's.

"Careful," John says, his voice snapping him out of his thoughts as he flips another crêpe. "Your possessiveness is showing."

John learns fast.

"Are you mine, John?"

John turns his head and smiles at him over his shoulder. "It would seem that way.''

Sherlock steps forward and wraps his arms around John's folded wings, pressing his face into the space between his shoulder blades. He can feel the muscle shifting in John's back, along his spine, as his wings twitch and he wants to bottle it. Keep it forever.

"Come back to me." Sherlock murmurs into John's shirt. "If you leave."

"I will." John answers. Soft feathers brush Sherlock's cheek. The kitchen smells warm and sugary. He can hear John breathing.

He wants this moment to last. Always.


	3. atramentum

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock finds that John is not the only unnatural being wandering around London.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Experience is the name every one gives to their mistakes."
> 
> \- Oscar Wilde

* * *

It's been raining nonstop for eight days. Sherlock wonders if it somehow involves John, since it seems as if the weather is constantly upset that he's here.

Then he remembers that he lives in London, the eternal raincloud, and he can't be arsed to care anymore because if the weather really hinges on John's presence then he'd be perfectly happy for it to rain every day the rest of his life.

The interior of 221B remains wholly untouched as rain taps against the windows in the wet night, the air warm and sugary, diaphanous with the heavy laziness that comes with a fulfilling dinner. John sits in the chair that Sherlock's associating him with more and more, his wings spilling over the arms, feathers barely grazing the floor. Sherlock sits across from him, knees curled to his chest as he stares into the new-born fire.

"How human are you, John?" He asks, and his voice sounds distant, drifting heavily through the room.

"Bugger, is my tail showing?" John replies with a playful smile. "Well, I guess biologically speaking I'm as close to you as any other person on this planet. The change between realms shifts your insides a bit on the way over, made me look more like what you'd expect me to…made me look nonthreatening, so you'd accept me easier. There are some little differences though. For one, the food here, although it's quite good, doesn't do anything for me. I don't need to convert it into anything, so it just burns away after I've eaten it. It's a bit of a waste, but you don't hear me complaining. But in my real form I don't have ten eyes or a third leg or anything. I'm just…bigger, I guess. Brighter. Stronger."

His fingers rap against the arm of the chair. Sherlock looks at him a moment.

"You know, I heard somewhere that angels don't make mistakes because they can see the consequences of any and every choice they make."

"Well, whoever told you that hasn't got all their facts straight." John says as he smiles teasingly. "Angels are one thing. I'm something else entirely."

"Yes, you certainly are." Sherlock murmurs, and the fire crackles apart the gaps of silence that fills the room.

"Everything that could ever happen because of my actions look like streets, at least to me. I know which ones are smoothest, that will take me where I want to go, and I know which ones are full of potholes that stop in a dead end. But those are only the clearest ones, the simplest decisions. There are some situations where I have to choose immediately and everything is a giant blur, like watching cars rush down the highway. Some paths feel better than others in the moment, but that doesn't always mean they're the right ones."

"And they led you here?"

A faint smile graces John's face. "No. No, it was nothing like that. I knew exactly what I was doing when I came here."

"You did?"

"Yeah," He grins. "Although it was hard to make a mistake when every road led to you."

The sentiment of John's words are lost on him.

"I guess what I was asking is if you had an arm chopped off," Here John chokes on his tea at the change of topic, "Would you bleed out in great spurts like any other human or would you grow back another one or what?"

"I don't know. I haven't really been into mutilation to be honest." He says, smiling. "But I suppose if I were to get hurt or sliced up or whatever, the atramentum would take care of it."

"How does pen ink help you?"

John laughs. "No, not pen ink, just ink. That's only what we call it though, of course, not what it actually is."

"Yes, naturally." Sherlock says dryly. "What is it then?"

"It's a lot like your blood, in a way. Only it's…not."

"I do so love your eloquent explanations, John."

"I mean it's not alive like yours is. It doesn't hum inside you, it just  _sits_ there. It waits until it's needed."

"Until your life is in danger?"

"Most likely. I've never had to test that out though, but some of my more—ah—aggressive brothers have."

"Did they die?"

"Die? No, we can't die. At least not in your sense of the word. Think of it though, if you can't bleed out, how can your enemy get rid of you?"

"Annihilation to the point where they couldn't recover."

John smiles at him and he knows he's correct. There's no better feeling than experiencing John's admiration, especially since he usually receives some variant of sour disdain.

"I don't know if it's entirely conceivable to you, but we have powers—we don't like to use them often, but we do—and I can destroy you where you sit as easily as crushing an ant. Some Watchers wouldn't even bat an eye either."

"You look so…normal though."

"What, were you expecting something horrendously unnatural like three spleens or a working appendix?"

"What is it with you and multiple organs?"

"I don't know; that seems to be the answer that you were expecting." John shrugs, but the way he looks at Sherlock, it's like he knows what he was really asking.

"I don't have a heart." John says solemnly.

"Nonsense." Sherlock scoffs. "You have more of a heart than I do."

"Physiologically, no. Metaphorically," John shakes his head. "Again, no."

John takes Sherlock's hand and presses it to the centre of his chest. Sherlock can only feel his own pulse underneath his palm.

"You don't realise how wonderful it is that your heart beats only for you."

"Is this the part where I'm supposed to take you seriously?" Sherlock snaps. "Because you know what it's like to not have one then I'm supposed to appreciate mine?"

As soon as the words are out, Sherlock wishes he could take them back, shove them deep down so John could never hear them again.

"No, it's okay Sherlock." John says gently. "You don't have to regret what you say if you mean it…if it upsets you. It's better than keeping it inside until it turns stagnant and bitter and you're too ashamed of it to tell me. You're human. You all have thoughts that are too terrible to say."

Sherlock stares at him for a moment, a little awed by the fact that, in face of his caustic tongue, John remains unperturbed.

"My cynicism was never the characteristic I wished to advertise yet always is the one that seems the most evident." Sherlock says lowly, almost as if in apology.

 John doesn’t like it. This wounded man, so damaged by that glorious, vicious progeny of earth that should stand together instead of tearing him down. It was wrong, so wrong, that the only being to truly accept Sherlock for who he is wasn’t even of his world. Humans had an inherent capacity for cruelness that he didn’t think he’d ever really understand.

“What is a cynic?” John replies solemnly, glancing into the fire. “He’s only a man that knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”

A bitter smile grows on Sherlock’s face.

“You’ve got Wilde paraphrased then, have you?”

“I’ve paid the price of an eternity to watch this earth,” John murmurs. “To watch you.”

Sherlock’s gaze finally turns to look at him. There is a guarded hope sheltered underneath the jaded cynicism like the gaze of a child trapped under rubble as it sees sunlight.

“You don’t think you matter, Sherlock.” John says softly, something inside him swollen with heavy sympathy. “You don’t think anyone cares about what happens to you. For thirty years, you’ve thought you’ve been alone.” He swallows, or tries to, but his throat is closing. “For thirty years, I’ve watched you. I’ve learned your heart, memorised it inside and out. I could point it out if I were blindfolded in the darkness and didn’t know which way was up. I’ve watched you destroy yourself and I’ve watched you build yourself back up. You think your heart is worth less than one that doesn’t even exist? Then you don’t know how precious yours is.” His voice quiets to a whisper. He can feel his eyes stinging. "That's why, no matter what you say, no matter what bitterness you try to throw at me, I'll always stay because I know how  _good_  you are, Sherlock Holmes. No, don't look at me like that. You are. You just haven't realised it yet. Despite the people that spit on your face and leave you to salvage your dignity by spitting acid back at them, despite the fact that you don't think you deserve happines or love, despite the disappointments and let-downs and foibles and the fact that you think you’re something ugly, a freak for others to laugh at, you are still the most _beautiful_ thing I’ve ever seen, Sherlock Holmes. You shouldn't be so quick to discount yourself, to think that you don't matter, because you matter most. I did not endure an eternity of suffering to watch you do the same. I will _never_  let you do the same as long as I have anything to say about it. You are too good a man.”

Sherlock stares back at him, wordless. Wordless, because John has said all of the things that Sherlock has wished for in the dead of night, when he was alone and the house was asleep, as fervently when he was young as when it was yesterday, because John has validated all of those hidden feelings that he’s kept sheltered, that he’s tried to destroy but couldn’t, because John has reached in and revived a piece of him that he had vainly tried to kill with drugs and bitter callousness yet which lived on, starved and neglected but alive.

John, the inhuman, is the most human part of him.

John, the paradox. In his life for one week and already he can’t seem to bear to think of living without him.

He is speechless, because he has no clue what brought John to him, but he knows that he will let nothing on this earth take him away.

* * *

He decides to test just how human John really is.

John doesn't disappoint. Save for the wings and the dark blood, he passes everything Sherlock throws at him with flying colours. It seems that once he got the basics down, he mastered the art of being human.

He hides John's books. John shoots him an irate glare as he finds them after spending a long day searching.

John wakes with his wings bound together. He chases Sherlock through the flat and rugby tackles him before he gets him to untie them.

Sherlock barges in on John as he gets out of the shower. Nothing disappointing there. On the contrary, John certainly did not have doll parts. Sherlock fights the urge to go back and take pictures.

John understands society, but he doesn't care for it much. He lets Sherlock take him to New Scotland Yard to meet Lestrade and down to Bart's to meet Molly before he announces that he'd rather just stay at the flat if that's alright with Sherlock. And it is. Anything is alright with Sherlock as long as John is there. Well almost anything. He's not about to start making him tea or scrubbing his hair in the shower or do anything that's wholly in John's faculties to do.

Sherlock steps in front of a lorry as it speeds down Baker Street. John pulls him out of the way and chastises him for the rest of the day, something that Sherlock blissfully listens to.

He's growing comfortable with John.

He doesn't know just how long that will last.

* * *

Cold grey clouds roll past the window, filtered light barely illuminating the window. The cool, damp morning air softly breezes into the room, prickling Sherlock's skin, and he pulls the thick duvet closer to him.

"Oi…" Someone groans beside him and his eyes fly open, head tilting over his shoulders to look at the soft gold locks of hair peeking out at him from underneath the eiderdown.

Oh. He'd forgotten.

Soundlessly, he flings the sheets away from him and tucks them under John's body to keep the warmth in before he quietly opens the door to his bathroom.

He hadn't managed to clean off all the blood yet.

* * *

It had started, like many things, because Sherlock was bored.

John was napping on the sofa, and Sherlock found that his endless fascination with watching John's unconscious facial tics wasn't so endless after all. It was best if he found something else to do, and he could dog-ear this moment, come back to it later, so if ever the day came that he no longer found John interesting (however unlikely it was), he'd always have this, have John's slackened, peaceful face and the soft sounds of his calm breathing.

He went to Bart's. Molly, as politely as she could, ushered him out of the morgue with the explanation that there were too many bodies that day already to make room for his.

He checked his phone. No word from Lestrade.

Rain flecks against the window, coming down in sheets now, the downpour so thick that he could barely see the lights on the other side of the street as he stood in Bart's reception lobby, a place almost sterile in its design. Perhaps that was why Sherlock liked hospitals, when he wasn't occupying them. They had the quietly accepted atmosphere that science came first and personal comfort took the backseat.

His phone begins to ring in his pocket and he answers far too quickly for it to be Lestrade.

"John?"

"Sherlock," John's voice is edging on the precipice of panic, low and rushed and Sherlock nearly takes his phone away from his ear at the volume. "Sherlock, something's happened, I need—"

"Are you alright?"

"That doesn't matter, listen, I need you to stay inside, okay? Can you do that for me?"

"John, what—"

He stops as he hears John's sharp cry of pain, long and drawn out in a way that can only bespeak of prolonged suffering. His grip tightens on his phone, his knuckles white.

"John?  _John_ , talk to me, are you alright?"

"Sh—argh, Sherlock, don't go outside. Understand? Do not go outside."

"But John I—"

"Promise me, Sherlock. You won't go anywhere until I tell you to."

"I—"

There is another shout of pain and the sound of something breaking, followed by John's laboured panting.

"John?"

With a short click, the call disconnects.

He tries to call back one, two, six times, getting no answer on any, before he raises his collar and decides to forgo John's warning as he bolts outside.

His hair is almost instantly flattened to his head, water pouring off his dark locks as he darts into the unnaturally stagnant street. The traffic is at a standstill, the drivers unable to see through the torrential cascade and their headlights beam brightly through the thick rain as Sherlock's darkened figure moves through them.

His lack of any kind of formulated plan is painfully obvious to himself as he searches for open taxis in standstill traffic while simultaneously calculating how long it would take for him to run to Baker Street.

Doesn't matter. John matters. Get to John. Get your heart to stop this incessant crying. It's getting quite sad.

He turns into an alleyway, a shortcut he's long used upon the not-uncommon shortage of taxis.

In hindsight, he smells it before he sees it.

The pervading scent is one of death, of decay and deterioration, like the walls have been coated in a paste of lukewarm waste and pungent sweat and old, damp dirt that's spent an eternity soaking in its own juices, revelling in its squalid degeneration.

As his eyes settle on it, the smell is pushed to the back of his mind as it struggles to rationalise what its seeing.

There is a werewolf in the middle of London.

Although, it is a bit of a disappointment, if only because it doesn't technically look like what he'd expect it to.

It's large, certainly, the size of some great animal whose presence forces it to be noticed—like a moose or a rhinoceros—and it's drinking from a pool of puddled rainwater as if it's quenching a thirst it's had all its life.

It stands on all fours, its paws long and spindling, with crooked, dirtied yellow talons at the ends jutting over its toes. Thin, angled limbs shoot up to support an utterly emaciated body covered in pitifully thin mangy patches of fur and waxy skin that's crusted over with cuts and bitemarks. Its skin is stretched taunt over ribs that peek out from the edges of the thick, matted fur covering its chest and neck, which seems to be the most grotesque part of the whole creature; the soft flesh has been ripped open in claw-like slashes, the deadened skin hanging in flaps over the raw muscle of its still-intact oesophagus, shining a dark pink and red as it swallows down water.

"You know, you may as well just drink sewer water for all the good that'll do for you."

It raises its great head, torn and pocket-marked ears twitching at the sound of his voice, and it turns to him with black eyes void of colour save for the twin miniatures of Sherlock that it reflects. Water pours from its mangled neck into the tangled dread-like fur of its chest as it rears onto its hind legs, which tremble under the strain.

It whines, low and keening, its weight shifting back.

For a moment, Sherlock truly thinks it's going to run and he doesn't know if he's relieved or disappointed.

Then it snarls, revealing rows of blackened, rotted teeth and bleeding gaps where some once belonged, and a roar rips from its desiccated throat as it charges at him with unnatural speed and he knows he's royally fucked long before it raises a clawed paw to strike him down.

He wonders what happened to John. That's what he most regrets, what will haunt him as he's torn apart and bleeds to death under this creature's teeth. John. That he never got to say goodbye, that John's face is not implanted and burned into his mind as the last thing he sees like he wanted him to be.

A loud thunderclap crashes through the sky as something heavy lands in front of him, the impact jaggedly splitting the pavement apart. Sherlock can feel it fissuring underneath his feet.

He hears the beast yelp before it bangs against a skip and he deems it safe enough to open his eyes and see his saviour for himself.

John stands in front of him, wings flared protectively, stretching so far they almost span the width of the alley. In his haste he seems to have decided to forgo a shirt, and rain spills down his wings, dampening the soft feathers that are flecked with a black blood that can only be his, trickling down his bare back as it washes away the shining obsidian drops. His body blocks the light from the street, casting his silhouette over Sherlock's face.

" _Leave_." His voice is low and hollow, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once, and it makes something inside Sherlock want to crawl into itself and shrink away in submission.

The beast whines, rolling itself onto its feet, before the whine grows into a roar, echoing off the wet bricks and setting the hair on Sherlock's neck on end.

"I don't think it wants to listen to you, John—" Sherlock says as the creature advances on them.

"I meant  _you_!" John shouts, almost snarling, as his head swivels to look over his shoulder. He grabs a piece of jagged metal piping from the debris littering the alley and Sherlock could swear it begins to pulse in his hand, humming with whatever energy John is powering through it.

The beast charges, yet John waits with patience that a soldier would envy before it comes within arm's length and he slams the pipe into its face, sending it flying back in a burst of light and it collides with the wall in a harsh cacophony of breaking bone and splintering brick.

John turns back to him, water sluicing off his face.

"Sherlock, you need to leave."

Leave? Now? This is like a low-budget horror movie come to life. The angel versus the werewolf. He can't just leave—

"Sherlock, your morbid curiosity isn't worth having your heart torn out and shown to you while it's still beating, alright? Go."

"But I—"

" _I said leave!_ " John shouts, and Sherlock feels himself turning away from the darkness that emenates from him, from the fury that courses from John like body heat. He feels his feet carry him to the other side of the alley, away from that thing, away from John, John, no, he doesn't want to leave, he doesn't want to go any place where John isn't—

His feet ignore him, as if after thirty years of service they've decided to secede.

He knows it's Johns doing. He's sure.

Many things from this night will haunt him, but it is the fury in John's face that strikes him the hardest. Fury, because Sherlock did what he does best and ignored the advice of others and now it was John who had paid the price of his impetuousness, John who was left alone to fight something Sherlock had provoked, and it was Sherlock who was ignored, turned away. John was risking his life to protect Sherlock's. No one had ever done that before, made such a bold statement that they considered someone else's wellbeing superior to their own. It made him feel sick, made his stomach clench and his head hurt and his heart ache.

His feet carry him onwards, through the wet streets, as rain dampens his coat, making his shirt paste to his skin.

His mind wanders. He'll take anything if it means he doesn't think of that alleyway, of John fighting alone in that cold maelstrom of blood and rain.

" _Free will is precious to angels, for they know the word but not the taste."_

When he was a boy, his parents tried to take him to church once. Singular. They never attempted it again. The bishop spoke about angels. Sherlock wishes now that he'd listened. He wishes he'd have held his father's hand in line for the Eucharist instead of sneering at the bishop that the odds of blood turning into wine because you said a few magic words were scientifically impossible, instead of offending a majority of the parishioners and being banned from the service.

John knew how precious choice was, and he took it away. He left Sherlock his mind but disconnected his body because he deemed them to be too dangerous to one another to care about his personal safety.

His knees give out as he reaches the stoop of 221. He can't bring himself to move off the ground, his knees coming to his chest as his arms wrap around them. They're his once more. His heart lurches.

Is it because his destination has been reached or because something has happened to John?

_John is too good, too—nothing can happen to John, he can heal himself, he said so, and that thing certainly wouldn't be the end of him, it can't—I saw him fight it, I saw him winning, John. John, John what are you doing to me?_

His mind races, trying to focus on anything and everything but the numbing sensation that's spreading through him like his circulation has stopped, but his heart is back in that alley, with John, where it belongs, and it feels a thousand miles away. He can almost see John now, rain dripping down that face concentrated in utter stoicism as he continues to draw blood from that beast that he seemed to know so well.

It is Mrs Hudson who finds him. Mrs Hudson who helps him up and ushers him inside, who drapes a blanket around shoulders that he didn't realise were shivering, who sets out warm clothes and draws him a hot bath. John would like the way Sherlock permitted her to mother him, the way he accepted her tea without protest even though it wasn't as atrocious as how John made it. He'd approve of how compliant Sherlock had turned under her hands, allowing himself to go through the ministrations until he was left alone.

The flat is too quiet. All the lights are off and he stands at his window, scanning the fogged, translucent street for any signs of John.

Lightning arcs across the sky, flashing down upon the world for a brief moment. Thunder sounds not three seconds later. The storm is passing.

As the thick rumble fades there is a great crash above him and shingles from the roof shower past the window. The other tenants would think that it's thunder. Sherlock thinks otherwise.

"John…"

He crosses the room and bounds up the stairs, throwing open the door so hard it slams against the wall. John's window has been smashed inwards, pieces of glass littering the floor, and he hastily shrugs on a pair of John's ratty slippers to trek across the mess on the floor. Rain sweeps in through the broken sill, splashing against the floorboards as it howls into the room.

Sherlock leans out of the window, careful of the jagged glass that remains, his hair buffered by the wind and rain, and he just barely manages to catch John's body as he tumbles into the room.

"John!" He can't decide to lay him on his back or front; both look equally daunting, coated in rain and blood and shadow. "John, are you alright? Say something John, talk to me, please—"

"Water." John croaks. "Get me in the water."

Sherlock nods and, as carefully as he can, he hauls John across the room. Getting him down the stairs is a bigger problem, but John manages to grip the threshold of the door and pull himself into some semblance of a standing position, one arm draped over Sherlock's shoulders as Sherlock's hand locks around his waist. Step by step, hours seem to pass before they can get to the bottom and through the kitchen. As Sherlock reaches for the knob to his room, he can see his free hand, slick with a blackness that looks like oil. Atramentum.

"You are not leaving me, John." He says through gritted teeth as he staggers into the bathroom and flicks on the light. "Not tonight. Not now. Come  _on_ , you great stupid thing."

He lays John against the tub as he turns on the water, the room still warm and steamy from his bath. Hot air swarms around them as he tries to work around those sprawled wings to rid John of the torn and shredded things that once could be called clothes but were now nothing more than rags; they're absolutely filthy, smelling of old blood and garbage and something almost sulphuric.

As he tries to lift John from underneath his shoulders John suddenly begins to thrash.

"Too hot…" He murmurs, his voice scraping against his throat. "'s too hot."

His foot catches against the cabinet as he struggles for purchase on anything other than slippery floor.

"Sherlock—no—shade's broken, it's in pieces—the snakes are waiting…"

"John, John, let me help you, listen to me—" Sherlock pleads, finding it hard to manage all of this mess in so little space. "John,  _STOP_!"

The fight seems to leave John for a moment and it's all Sherlock needs to lift him over the rim of the tub, spilling water onto the floor as John sinks into the warm bath. Sherlock's hand comes to support his head, the other trying to hold him down.

"It feels real," John sobs, his voice cracking as water laps over his face. "It feels real."

"It's not real John, it's not—"

He can't fit into the tub with his wings folded as they are, so Sherlock spreads them out, one angling awkwardly against the cold tile of the bathtub and the other stretching out to the sink as he lays John's head against the back of the tub. He's thankful for the weak light because he doesn't think he has the strength to see just how damaged John is. Because of him.

John's calmer now, his breath evening as the water dirties with mud and thick blackness that comes off his skin in congealed globs like tar, dense and oily. His eyes slide open slowly, flickering for a moment before settling on Sherlock, who must look more like a crazed semblance of a man than anything else at this point. There's too much darkness littering the water, it's growing less clear by the second.

"I don't—I don't have a heart." John whispers hoarsely. "I don't have a heart."

"John, I know, but use your atramentum, please, John, please heal yourself, come on—"

"Nn—I don't have a heart. I just—just have a soul. But whatever it is, whatever I have…it's yours. It's yours, Sherlock."

Sherlock says nothing. He can't. He tightens his hold on John's hand and feels his head bow over the edge of the tub, brushing John's dirtied knee, as a low groan of agonised despair tears from his throat. He sounds like a dying animal, but god, that's just what he feels like. He's dying and he's not even the one bleeding.

He feels a hand smooth over his hair.

"Sh'lock…it's okay…'m gonna be okay."

He looks up, the light hurts his eyes for a moment, and John smiles weakly at him.

"Tell me what to do. Tell me how to save you."

"Leave me here…" John murmurs. "Just for a while." He adds upon seeing Sherlock's face.

Sherlock closes his eyes. He's not going to thank anyone specifically, but he feels such an intense relief that he feels like he should send out one big engraved thank you card out into the universe.

He's suddenly so tired, crashing down hard in that little bathroom, and his eyes are dragging shut, his cheek pressed against the side of the tub.

"You don't have to stay. Go to bed."

Sherlock scoffs. "Unacceptable. You need someone to help you into it…not letting you go up the stairs anyways and your room is such a wreck it would offend a squatter."

"Oh god, my room must be a mess."

Sherlock makes a noise of agreement. It's all he can manage. "Mrs Hudson won't be pleased."


	4. belly of the beast

Sherlock wakes to John’s face peering down at him.

“Let’s go out. I want to go out.” John says excitedly and Sherlock gives a yelp of surprise as he yanks up the sheets and upends John off the bed. As he rolls off, John tucks into a tumble and rises to his feet in one fluid motion, stretching his arms above his head, the muscles pulling taut, like some supernatural Olympic gymnast before he disappears into the kitchen.

Sherlock watches him go, half dazed and barely sentient.

Amazing. Not ten hours ago John was bleeding to death in the bathroom. Well, not _bleeding_ per se, but his existence had been called into question, and here he was doing bloody _acrobatics_. The memory of white splashed with inky globs of black made Sherlock feel like he was tethered to something dark and cold and had only just noticed because the chain had reached its end.

He hears the banging of crockery as John rummages through the cabinets and he shuffles to his feet. Whatever awaits him in there, it can’t be anything good, but it’s _indescribably_ better than the alternative, which is waking up alone, so he finds that he doesn’t particularly care.

“What’s gotten into you?” He asks, wearily carding his hands through his messy hair as leans against the threshold.

“I found the coffee.” John replies excitedly.

Ah. Sherlock had gone to great lengths to hide that. Not great enough apparently.

“There _was_ a reason it was hidden, John.”

“Obviously,” John snorts. “You wanted me to find it.”

Sherlock grins despite himself.

“Well, I suppose while you’re at it you can make me some too. I need it after last night…” He sighs, sitting down at the table.

“You cleaned the bathroom.” John says solemnly.

“I did.”

“That’s the first time you’ve cleaned anything.”

“Ah, not true. When I lived alone I cleaned my equipment, or at least those that were left after the inevitable explosions.”

“You don’t clean those now.”

“That’s because you usually get to them before I can.”

“Or before you decide to move your lazy arse and do them yourself.”

“What was that thing last night?” Sherlock asks. “A werewolf?”

John attempts to grab a cup off a shelf he can’t reach and huffs a heavy breath of air as he stretches what Sherlock expects are sore muscles. Nearly falling off a roof and flying over London will do that to a person. He aches to think what it will do to an angel.

“Werewolf?” John shoots him a querying glance. “That’s the monster made from man, right? Covered in fur?”

“Don’t forget the fangs.” Sherlock replies, taking the cup from him.

“Even with the fangs that’s not what you saw. Not exactly anyways.”

“Why? What is it?”

“Tenebest.” John replies with a weariness that suggests he knows more of it than he’d like to. “It can’t be made from man because there’s no _man_ to make it from. It’s truly, in every sense of the word, a monster.”

“How did you know it was here? You called, you told me to stay inside—”

“Oh, you do remember that. I thought you hadn’t been listening since you _went outside_.”

“You sounded to be in severe pain, John, I wasn’t going to sit there idly while I thought—” Sherlock stops suddenly, shutting his mouth. “What happened to you anyways?”

John takes a swig of coffee before answering, as if to steel himself.

“You know how humans have adrenalin modes? A basic, intrinsic defence mechanism?”

“Yes, of course.”

John holds up his hands as if to say ‘Well?’

“That’s what that was? Your body trying to protect you?”

“No, I was trying to protect _you_ , you great idiot.”

“I don’t follow.”

“The Nephilim, we aren’t wired like you are. We don’t have the notion of self-preservation because we don’t need it. We don’t live, but we _exist_. There’s no real way for us to be in danger since we have the atramentum unless someone really wants to get rid of us, and that’s usually provoked behaviour. Last night, I knew that there had been a breach on this realm. It’s just a _feeling_ , this hurt deep in my gut that screams that something has been violated. What’s more, these things don’t just happen randomly. That Tenebest didn’t just decide that it fancied a waltz through London. It was sent here, like I was, and it was within, what, two blocks from you? That’s not what I call coincidental. I knew I had to protect you, that I had to be prepared for the worst; I had to be _strong_. So I was, for you. For myself too if I’m being honest, because there isn’t a way that you could die that wouldn’t take me with you.”

Sherlock stares at him, coffee pot hanging from his hand in mid-air. He is still finding it hard to believe that of all the people on this Earth, John chose to be with him.

“John…”

“Hello Greg!” John suddenly calls out, his eyes still on Sherlock’s.

“Greg?” Sherlock frowns, bemused. “My name is Sherlock. Who is Greg?”

John raises an eyebrow.

“I am, you git.” Lestrade says from the doorway.

 “Ah, Lestrade,” Sherlock says with that pseudo-polite voice John knows he uses when he wants to be insufferable. “Come for another drug’s bust again?”

“I don’t know Sherlock, withholding evidence again?”

“Not today.” Sherlock sniffs, pouring his coffee. “Sorry to disappoint.”

“Hello John. Nice to see you.”

John smiles and nods.

“Care for a cuppa?” He asks. “Freshly brewed.”

“No, I’ve got to get in to work soon. Thanks, though. I was just wondering why Sherlock here hasn’t been answering my texts.”

If John could professionally judge eye rolls, he’d give Sherlock’s a straight 10.

“I am under no legal obligation to text or help you with investigations.” Sherlock answers.

“No, you’re right, but I _know_ you, Sherlock. Helping with investigations is the only venue where you can be a pompous arse and get away with it.”

“You’re doing yourself wonders, _Greg_. Any more kind words in there for me?”

“Sherlock, honestly, your help would be much appreciated at this point—”

“Well, I’ve had my hands full as I am dealing with an angel.”

“Sorry?”

“Oh, apologies, John here is an angel. Did I forget to mention? I’m showing him around London.”

Lestrade turns his eyes from John to Sherlock as if he’s waiting for one of them to disprove what Sherlock’s said.

“Right.” Lestrade says finally. “So you’ve got an angel in your flat. Anything else I should know about? Hm? Vampire upstairs? Jesus Christ in the pantry? Frankenstein’s Monster in the shower?”

“Well, now that you mentioned it, John did fight a werewolf yesterday.” Sherlock says, taking a sip of coffee.

“A werewolf?” Lestrade asks incredulously, looking between Sherlock and John. “You expect me to believe that?”

“We don’t quite have empirical proof on the werewolf yet, but with Jesus locked up in the pantry we haven’t had to go to the grocer’s in weeks, although we are getting a bit sick of bread and fish.” Sherlock smirks and John stifles a laugh into his mug.

“And you wouldn’t believe how high Frankenstein’s Monster’s been rucking up our water bill, not to mention he’s been using the hot tap too much.” John mutters and that breaks their composure as they both double over in laughter.

“Oi, can someone please let me in on the joke?” Lestrade says with a growl of irritation.

“I don’t think you’d understand it.” Sherlock mutters.

“Sherlock, don’t be an instigator.” John says, cutting in. “Actually, don’t pull the unnecessary fact that I’m supernatural out of your arse so you can win a row and feel superior—”

“Wait, he’s _right_?” Greg asks, startled.

John looks up at him and shrugs.

“Can you not see them?” Sherlock asks.

“See what?”

“The wings.”

“ _Wings_? What wings? Have you lot been shooting up together? John, mate, I hope for your sake you’d have the sense to change needles at least—”

John’s not listening. He’s busy shrugging out of his shirt.

“Can someone tell me why the _bloody hell_ he’s stripping in the kitchen?” Lestrade asks and he sounds to be on the verge of a breakdown.

No one answers, because John’s wings have unfurled, filling the kitchen as soft light filters through them.

“Oh my god.” Lestrade mutters before turning to Sherlock. “Did you drug my coffee?”

“Not this time, no.” Sherlock answers solemnly.

“ _This time_?”

“Will you please focus on the amazing sight before you?” Sherlock snaps. “Or do you see angels all the time walking around London?”

Lestrade turns to look at John and swallows harshly.

“Not every day you see angels.” He says quietly.

“If we’re getting technical,” John says. “I’m not an angel.”

“Is he—?”

“No, not a genetic experiment.” Sherlock answers. “I asked.”

“You lot really don’t trust your government, do you?”

“I myself have always suspected that the Queen has a morbid interest in DNA synthesis.” Sherlock says dryly.

“So…okay, Christ…” Lestrade ruffles his hand through his hair. “So what are you then?”

“Does it really matter?” John asks with a shrug.

“A bit, yeah.” Lestrade bites.

“Humans like answers, John.” Sherlock says, crossing his arms. “We’re a curious creature.”

“Oh, don’t you go get all high and mighty _mysterious_ on us, Sherlock,” Lestrade snaps. “I’m sure you were just as amazed as I am when you met him.”

“He almost landed on me, so yes, I was quite amazed that he didn’t crush my sternum.”

Lestrade opens his mouth to retort, but is cut off as his phone rings.

“Honestly, they have the worst bloody timing—hello?” He looks up as he places the receiver against his shoulder. “I’ll be back later, right?”

“Yeah.” John answers, shrugging on his shirt.

Lestrade’s gaze darts from John to Sherlock.

“Christ, nutters, the both of you.” He mutters before turning from the room and leaving.

“Well. That was…informative.”

“How so?”

“Lestrade believes in angels, otherwise he wouldn’t have seen your wings.”

“People can surprise you, Sherlock.” John says before draining his coffee. “Right. I’m off to the shower. I still want to go out though. That wasn’t the caffeine talking.”

“Sure.” Sherlock says with a wave of his hand, then calls after John: “Be careful of Frankenstein’s monster, he does like to crowd in your space.”

“Imagine Greg’s face if we actually had it here…” John smiles.

“Pity we didn’t have proof on the werewolf though.”

“Actually,” John says, catching himself on the doorway and backing up. “That bit you said about not having empirical evidence about Tenebest? That’s not exactly true…”

 

* * *

For a long moment after the clatter of the storage door being drawn up, Sherlock doesn’t speak.

“John, honestly, for someone that knows the outcome of everything, you can be quite stupid.”

There is a large box in the centre of the storage unit, covered in a thin sheet.

“I couldn’t _kill_ it, Sherlock! It didn’t feel right.”

“It attacked us!”

“It was frightened!”

“Ugh, _sentiment_.”

“Yes, Sherlock, it is, but you know how I can feel your thoughts? As hard as it is for you to understand, it’s not exclusive to just you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Remember the other day when we went out to see Molly and Lestrade?”

“Of course, you said you’d rather stay at the flat, but I don’t understand the connection since obviously there’s supposed to be one.”

“You’re good at deductions, so deduce.”

Sherlock’s eyes rake over him for a moment.

“Clearly, you care about things other than yourself.”

“Good, that’s good. You’re on your way.”

Sherlock rolls his eyes as John steps forward.

“And, since you care about things, you have a capacity for great compassion, which can be a strength, but also great naivety, which is a weakness. You trust easily—five minutes with Molly and you were already on the way to becoming best friends—but that may be because you can read people so well or feel their thoughts, as you said. Just like anyone else who has been stuck in one place for too long and have arrived in a new one, you’re eager to discover London—and Earth in general I suppose—yet you’ve stayed at the flat nearly all week. You wouldn’t go to Bart’s with me…but you seemed perfectly content, so who was I to question your happiness? Although I suspected there was a reason why you weren’t leaving. No one visits somewhere new and doesn’t go out to explore, to discover.”

There is a noise from the box, a low keening.

Sherlock continues.

“After I took you to the Yard you said you didn’t feel well. That’s nothing surprising considering Anderson was there, but you’re _supernatural_ and I’ve never heard of a vampire getting a head cold.”

“Well, according to Lestrade, we keep him upstairs. It does get a bit of a draft. Plus I have to share my bed with a vampire and he likes to hog the covers.” John says dryly.

“You could just cut out the middleman and sleep with me.” Sherlock murmurs and John sighs.

“Sherlock, I told you—”

“What, I can come home and climb into your lap and treat you like a life raft, but there’s something wrong with sharing a _bed_? There wouldn’t be anything sexual about it…”

Sherlock decides not to add “Unless you want there to be”. He’s seen John without a towel. Not a Ken doll. Surprising. Interesting. He wonders if John would feel stimulus like a normal person. He is in a unique opportunity to seduce an angel. The experiment to end all experiments.

“Later.” John mutters as though the beast can hear him and has the cognizance to understand what they’re talking about. “Tell me why I didn’t want to go out.”

“Oh, that’s been obvious from the beginning: because you can feel everyone’s thoughts. I imagine it’s rather like my deductions, although I learned to tune them out until they mattered. You walk outside, you get one beat of peace, and then a barrage of information assaults your senses and it’s like you’re drowning. You can’t breathe, your head aches, you feel…small. Lost in something you can’t control.”

“Yes.” John murmurs softly and Sherlock feels the swelling satisfaction that he’s gotten something right.

“But today is different.” Sherlock say, eyeing the blanketed box. “You had something to save.”

John throws back the blanket covering the cage.

The beast whimpers, withdrawing from the light with a low whine as it curls into itself. It looks, impossibly, more damaged than before. A runny liquid the colour of dead grass oozes from cuts on its side, some larger than others, and despite the bowl of water John had left for it, its lips were cracked and dry like it was refusing the offer out of protest.

“He’s been sick.” John says, hands on his hips. “Very sick. I broke one of his paws, but I managed to fix most of the damage.”

“If it’s been sick, why didn’t you just end its suffering? It’s only logical.”

“The logical way isn’t always the right one. My kind, we can’t kill. We can destroy, we can annihilate, but we can’t kill. It’s more of an all-or-nothing scenario.”

Sherlock gazes down at the beast. Something deep inside him recoils, something involuntary and built from years of evolution.

“Then destroy this one. Darwin’s certainly not doing it any favours; weed out the weak.”

“What, so his brothers will come back and we’ll be facing stronger enemies? You couldn’t even handle a sick one; I’d hate to see you up against one that’s healthy. Besides, we might need him.”

“We might _need_ him? For what? And furthermore, what makes you so sure it’s a _he_?”

John raises an eyebrow and points.

Sherlock huffs.

“Fair enough.”

John undoes the latch to the cage and enters, closing it behind him before Sherlock follows. He tries not to be upset; John did have a point about his chances against this thing, even if it was injured. Although what a wonderful opportunity for an examination. That would be marvellous, to take his pocket magnifier out and run it over every inch of this endlessly fascinating creature. And then maybe John would let him look at the beast too.

“Do you remember what I told you about Nachash?” John asks from where he kneels beside the beast, who seems too out of it to fight him off. “The snake?”

Sherlock nods.

“If he escaped Sheol, you can be sure he’ll know when someone else does.”

“You think he’ll come after you?”

“No.” John shakes his head, turning his gaze to Sherlock. “I think he’ll come after _you_.”

“Me? Why? I don’t have wings.”

John smiles that stupid little knowing smile of his that sends warmth passing over Sherlock’s mind like sunshine bursting through the clouds on a foggy day.

“Sometimes it’s what you can’t see that counts.”

John turns back to the beast and Sherlock can hear that humming again, the same frequency as the one from the alley when John picked up that broken piping. The beast groans and attempts to move, but John shushes it with words Sherlock can’t decipher; they sound like rain sloshing on wet pavement, like the crunch of dead leaves, like the silence of a forest, sounds of nature that are too big and vast to be forced into something as small as words.

Sherlock registers a gleam of silver as John pulls a pocketknife from his pocket and clenches it in his closed fist.

“John, no—”

But John has already brought the knife through his hand, slicing his palm open in a slow spurt of atramentum. He winces, but brings it to the beast’s belly.

Sherlock watches in silent awe as the black liquid drips from John’s palm to the creature’s leathery skin, brushing over the cuts like balm as they seal under his hand.

“I didn’t have enough time to do this last night.” John says calmly. He sounds like a doctor, stoic and concentrated. “I could only stow him here, where I knew he’d be safe, or leave him in the alley, where he’d be a corpse no one could explain. He got a good hit across my shoulder though, so I couldn’t fly him very far.”

Sherlock eyes the still healing scar across the velvety fur of John’s right coracoid, just above where it juts from his shoulder blade. A few more days—perhaps even hours—and it will be as if John didn’t almost die fighting for him.

The beast gives a great exhale as it falls asleep.

John sighs and stands, shrugging on his coat as his wings fold snugly underneath it.

“You’re too good for me.” Sherlock says abruptly, if only because he has just acknowledged the feeling himself.

“Nonsense. I have bad days.”

“Your idea of a bad day is when you don’t kill an injured animal because it attacked me.”

“I did have days before I came here, Sherlock.”

“Regardless, the statement is still true.” He sniffs.

John comes to stand in front of him. He grazes a hand over Sherlock’s cheek.

“Remember what I said about you counting more than you think you do.” He says softly before he smiles and walks out of the storage unit.

Sherlock has a selfish desire to wish that John says that he matters the most again.

“This beast,” He says, following after John. “What are we going to call it?”

“You want to name it now?”

“If it lives, if we’re going to rely on it someday, it needs a name.”

John grins, reaching up for the door as he shuts it, plummeting the unit into darkness.

“How about Gladstone?”


	5. ode to a mediocre sandwich

"Look at us, John."

John makes a querying noise as he glances up to Sherlock, mouth too full of sandwich to properly form a question.

"Neither of us needs nourishment, you more than myself, yet here we are. Eating."

"Is that a complaint?"

"Upon the consideration of the food you could be eating yet aren't, yes."

John stares at him for a moment before looking at his plate.

"What's wrong with my sandwich?"

Sherlock gives him a look as if it were obvious. His hair ruffles under the breeze.

"Anyways," John continues, sipping his water. "Just because I can't get anything nutritionally from it doesn't mean I can't enjoy it."

"Don't you think that's a little wasteful?"

"Yeah, maybe it is," John shrugs before his eyes turn up to Sherlock for a moment. "But I don't know how long I have here. Or when I'll be back. So, call me selfish, but  _I_  am going to enjoy my sandwich and  _you_ can sit there and watch, you great panda."

He returns his attention to his food and Sherlock stares at him bemusedly.

"Did you just call me a  _panda_?"

"Yep." John says, the words garbled by a mouthful of sandwich.

"May I ask why, out of a plethora of zoological choices, you chose a panda?"

"It's my understanding that pandas look cute but are in fact quite deadly."

" _Cute_?" Sherlock grimaces.

"Yes, I've heard that people often think pandas are cuddly."

" _Cuddly_?" He repeats with equal distaste. "When you equate me to an animal, you do so because it's  _cuddly_?"

John shrugs. "Yeah. Problem?"

"I have spent the majority of my life trying to avoid that particular comparison, actually."

"What animal did you fancy yourself to be, then?"

"I don't know; I've always had more interesting things to think about. This isn't a topic that's kept me up at night wondering if I remind myself of a barn owl or—god forbid—a panda."

"If I called you an owl that'd be complimenting your looks I suppose, but not your intelligence since owls' skulls are occupied mainly by their eyes and leave little room for their brains, and it'd be a crime to call your brain tiny."

"Oh shut up and eat your mediocre sandwich."

"Answer the question and stop hurting my sandwich's feelings."

"I'll sound egomaniacal."

"You sound like that anyways."

Sherlock glares darkly at him.

"For an egomaniac you're showing an awful lot of humility—"

"Spotted Necked Otter." Sherlock says lowly.

"An otter? Why?"

"It's smart, endangered, and it knows how to swim. Eat your sandwich."

A slow smile comes to John's face and Sherlock finds it's soon reflected on his.

"What about Mycroft?" John asks.

"Leopard seal. Fat and bumbling most of the time, but occasionally deadly."

"Who else? Molly? Mrs Hudson? That kind of annoying bloke with the bad haircut?"

"A collie dog and sparrow, respectively. Anderson would be an ay-ay or some other remarkably hideous creature."

"And Lestrade?"

"Something big and loyal. A wolf, perhaps, or a bear…maybe even a gorilla—"

"I hope that's a reflection on my character and not my appearance." A voice behind them says as Lestrade comes to sit down at their table.

"How did you find us?" John asks in mild surprise.

"Thank your boy over there." Lestrade says, gesturing to Sherlock. "Texted me your 'coordinates'. Said if I wanted to ask you anything you were free."

"Well that's lovely that he rented out my time. How's your day been?" John asks him, offering his crisps, which Lestrade takes with a nod of thanks.

"Wonderful, considering I had a homicide to take care of as well as the trivial knowledge that angels are real—and  _no_ , Sherlock, the murderer confessed on the spot so there's nothing for you to investigate." He adds and Sherlock visibly deflates, slumping back into his chair.

"What good are you if you haven't any crimes on?" He huffs and John is reminded of a petulant child who's been refused his sweets.

"We  _do_  have crimes on you giant ponce, and if you'll remember I have asked you to the last three scenes, but you've been holed up with John, which, I might add, was a relief to find out considering the things I thought you were up to, and can we  _please_ talk about how there is an  _angel_ sitting across from me  _eating a bloody sandwich_?"

"Please, by all means, say that louder, I don't think the waiter heard you." Sherlock hisses.

"It's just a lot to take in, yeah? I mean, this is stuff you hear in Sunday school, it's not stuff that  _actually_  happens."

"Well Jesus is still trapped in our pantry; he's getting quite worried." John says before he and Sherlock burst into barely-stifled laughter.

"Have you—this is going to sound stupid—have you met him?"

"Jesus?" John asks, brow furrowing. "No, no, he's in another realm, I guess. And that's not stupid—shut _up_  Sherlock—you're curious, and that's great. It's kind of like you're asking if someone from Kenya has met someone else from Iceland when neither of them have ever been out of the country."

"And your lot, the Nephilim, they're all angels?"

"How did you know that's what he is?" Sherlock asks, brow furrowing.

"Mycroft told me." Lestrade shrugs.

The atmosphere at the tables grinds to a sudden halt and Sherlock and John look at each other.

"What?" Lestrade asks, gaze darting between them. "Oh, come on, Sherlock, you had to have known—I mean I asked him to be discreet about it, but still—"

" _You_  asked  _him_  to be discreet?" John asks, surprised by the fact that Lestrade beat the most restrained man in the world to the punch.

"Uh, yeah, I can't have his lot following me around everywhere just because my texts were a bit terse or I misspelled a word and he thought I'd been attacked mid-sentence."

"Yes, imagine that," John says. "An overprotective, control-obsessed Holmes."

"I know, crazy, right?"

"If that's a veiled criticism about me," Sherlock sniffs, immersed in the contents of his phone, "I won't hear it and I won't respond to it."

* * *

An hour later, Lestrade had left and they had resumed their walk back to their flat, the day as grey and mild as it had ever been.

"While you're in this state of discovery," Sherlock says, scrolling through his phone. "Might I ask what sights you want to see?"

"Everything. I want to see everything."

Sherlock stares at his phone for a moment then looks up at John.

"How do you feel about Devonshire?"

"No opinion whatever. Why?"

"It seems that Baskerville has got a wild dog problem."


	6. varúð

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "It doesn't matter what I say,  
> the only thing that matters is how you feel,  
> understanding that the words are irrelevant is of great importance,  
> what feelings do you have?
> 
> Varúð."
> 
> \- "Varúð", Sigur Rós

 

* * *

The rain had slowed to a drizzle sometime overnight, leaving the sky a watery grey.

Sherlock pads into the kitchen, automatically swaying towards the coffee pot like some conditioned animal.

The pot is half-empty, left burning for who knows how long. John must have forgotten to turn it off; Sherlock really must give him a crash course on electronics before he burns the flat down, but somehow his experiments are usually the greater perpetrators. With a huff of half-conscious frustration, he dumps the pot before searching the cabinets only to find he'd just ridden himself of the last of the coffee.

"John? We're out of coffee. You need to go get some."

There is no answer.

Sherlock leans back to look into the parlour. Empty and quiet, dust filtering through the weak light.

"John?"

He sets down his cup and heads into the stairs, taking them two at a time to John's room before he swings the door open.

Nothing. John's bed is carefully made, as is typical of him, and a few stray feathers brush across the floor as he steps in. They are the only sign, the only piece of tangible evidence that John was ever here to begin with.

He darts back downstairs, nearly skidding down the stairs in his haste, and snatches his phone from the kitchen counter.

_Where are you? SH_

He clenches the phone tightly in his fist, waiting for the ping of an incoming reply.

He hears it in a moment, from the table beside John's chair.

John left his phone. That stupid idiot.

He bangs his fist against the threshold. Texts Lestrade.

_Is John with you? SH_

He drums his fingers on the counter as he waits before springing back to pace the kitchen. Really, in this day and age how long does it take to answer a text message—

It takes Lestrade six minutes and thirty-four seconds. Entirely too long for Sherlock's liking.

_It's eight in the morning on a Sunday, Sherlock. Of course he's not._

_Ask Mycroft then. SH_

_He says he hasn't heard from him either. Now please leave us alone or I will graphically describe what's about to happen in immense detail._

_Ask him to access the CCTVs around the area. SH_

_I'm serious, Sherlock. I'll send pictures. Let him be. He's an adult, er--well, you know._

Sherlock growls in frustration before heading to the parlour and donning his shoes, mismatched with his robe and pyjamas, but he couldn't be arsed to care about much so soon after waking up other than the fact that he needed to find John and then hassle him about buying more coffee.

After the initial panic of running through the flat half-awake, he's had time to think about the possibilities of what could have happened to John. He supposes that he should be concerned that John isn't there with him, and he is to some degree. He would've been astoundingly worried if he wasn't so sure his assumption was correct.

An angel in London that doesn't like to wander and whom has just adopted a pet. There'd only be one place he could be.

* * *

John squints as the door is thrown open, watery sunlight streaming into the unit.

"Sherlock? Do you mind?"

"We need coffee." Sherlock says, closing the door to the storage unit. Gladstone lifts his head and whines as he recognises him.

"Couldn't you have gotten that yourself?" John asks, returning his attention to the opened package of half-eaten raw meat in his lap as he breaks off a piece to feed to Gladstone.

"Not if you were around to get it for me. Which you weren't."

"Apologies. I didn't want to wake you. Glad's been antsy, like something's about to happen. I wanted to stay with him a bit longer, see if I could calm him down."

Sherlock sits on an empty crate as he watches Gladstone eat from John's hand. The beast looks mollified, totally domesticated by its conqueror, eating from the same hand that swung a pipe at it not three days ago.

_Didn't want to wake me, but couldn't leave a note. Idiot._

John feels a wave of irritation, cinnamon and the burn of ginger, emanate from Sherlock.

"You're upset with me." John says, letting the wolf lick the red juice off his fingers. "Why?"

"You told me you didn't know how long you'd be here. When I awoke, I thought—briefly—that your time had expired." Sherlock sniffs, turning his eyes from John. "I wasn't ready. Didn't want it to be over. I remember thinking how unfair it was."

"Unfair that I had supposedly left you without saying goodbye?"

"Unfair because I felt you'd left without living like you should have. Like you deserved."

"I'm not done here." John murmurs. "I don't think I'll ever be done."

"I don't want you to be."

"I know." John smiles gently. "I don't want me to be either."

"Will I know?" Sherlock asks, his hands clasped together, as John feeds the last of the meat to Gladstone. "When your time comes?"

"I don't know. I hope you will, but also that you won't because you'll know just how precious the time we have left is, and that's a great and terrifying thing, to know that what we have isn't permanent. That it ends."

"I know that already."

A sad smile blooms on John's face. "Do you?"

Sherlock stares at him, sees him, and he has nothing to say, no argument to make. John's words always make him feel naked, like he's been stripped bare, right down to the bones and sinew, and put under a lens.

"Yes." He says quietly. "Everything ends."

John looks at him for a moment before he turns away and crumples the leftover paper from the meat in his hands.

"Are you ready?" He asks, standing, as he pats Gladstone's head.

"No." Sherlock answers lowly. He may expect it, but he'll never be  _ready_.

John turns to him with a bemused expression. "But Baskerville was your idea…did you change your mind?"

 _Oh. That. Right_.

He blinks.

"I still have to pack."

* * *

John stands in the doorway, arms folded as he watches Sherlock lay a pair of trousers into his open bag.

"I love you."

"You're an angel, John." Sherlock scoffs without looking up. "You're  _supposed_  to love me. You're supposed to love everyone."

John opens his mouth as if to add something, but closes it, his eyes following Sherlock's movements as he packs.

They manage to make it to the train station just as theirs is about to depart, and he and Sherlock sit across from each other in an otherwise empty compartment as the English countryside speeds by, Sherlock's legs stretching to rest beside John's lap.

He tells them of their client, a man whose father had been employed by the military research facility in Baskerville before being killed by a rabid hound. Sherlock had looked into him, heavy PTSD resulting from the trauma as well as recurring insomnia and paranoia. He'd seen something he liked, something interesting.

Sherlock had just settled back into his seat and silence when John tasted it, felt his curiosity, a light wash of mint and salt water.

"Ask me, then." He says, breaking into Sherlock's silence.

The detective narrows his eyes.

"Why can't I see your wings?" He asks, hands clasped over his stomach. "This is nothing new; I've not seen them on occasion before, but why? I know you exist, so therefore I believe in you."

"Don't worry, you didn't break any rules or anything." John smiles. "I hide them in crowds, in case they attract too much attention. Walking with you on the street is fine, but in dense areas I don't want to risk a mob if suddenly everyone sees my wings and thinks I'm some divine archangel."

"The odds of that happening if you walked into a church are astronomical."

"Well, that might be why I haven't gone, then."

Sherlock smiles faintly, head turning to look out the window.

Recognising that he no longer holds any of Sherlock's attention, John pulls a worn paperback Mrs Hudson gave him and opens it. He suspects she knows about him, who he really is, because a woman that kind surely believes in some higher power or at least is owed wings of her own, but she hasn't let on. She had smiled at him sweetly as she handed him a box of her husband's old reading material and said that, since he certainly wouldn't be needing it, John could have them to turn to when Sherlock got to be too much. John was overcome by the desire to clasp her hands in his and promise her that she would be rewarded one day, but he had neither the authority nor the conviction. Sheol fostered no idea of Paradise, but if there was one, she belonged there.

John deafens to the outside world as he slowly sinks into the book, a remedial one by Sherlock's standards, and he only jolts back to the surface as the train brakes screech and Sherlock tosses his bag in his lap.

"I didn't know you read anything other than Scripture." He says with a hint of a teasing smile.

"The Watchers didn't really remember enough dogma to record it." John says, sliding the strap of his bag onto his shoulder.

"Do you have religion in Sheol?"

"We have heat." John answers simply. "That kind of fries your attention span. You don't really think about anything other than getting cooler."

"So you don't worship anything?"

John shrugs as Sherlock steps off the train. "Shade, I guess. Does that answer your question?"

"Interesting. Humans have a history of creating beings to worship, but you've deviated—"

"Yeah, but I'm not human, Sherlock, remember?" John points out, following him off the train and into the station.

"Right, right. I forgot."

John grins.

"Funny how that happens."

* * *

The owners of the bed and breakfast they're staying at think they're a couple. John is more curious than upset—was there anything particularly romantic about the two of them that made people keep saying that?—but the same cannot be said for Sherlock. He seems…offended? John can taste a citric, overly-sweet battery acid, but he doesn't want to label it disappointment in case he's wrong.

He wishes Sherlock had his power. Wishes he could taste John's own disappointment, cold and pervasively stinging like swallowing a chunk of ice or rinsing with mouthwash (John had thought it had burned a hole through his cheek when he first used it). He wishes Sherlock knew what it was, to feel these things and know how to fix them yet also to feel as if you are unfixable. But he doesn't truly wish these things; he would never want Sherlock to live a life other than his own. It wouldn't be right. Wouldn't be fair.

He and Sherlock eat dinner together in the small, cosy dining room, next to a popping fire. John doesn't think he's ever had better food, and enjoys every bite, although he always feels guilty for the waste. He sits back, belly full, and marvels. Marvels that he knows what it's like to have a full stomach (which he knows will torture him when he's back in Sheol, starving again), that he's sitting across from Sherlock—who  _wants_  him to be there—and that he could feel such a buoyant happiness in this lifetime.

He tastes surprise, bubbly and rich like aerated chocolate, and he turns his gaze to the source.

"Greg!" He smiles, waving Lestrade over.

"Greg?" Sherlock asks. "Who's Greg?"

John and Lestrade stare at him incredulously and John sighs.

"Sherlock, we've been over this already…"

" _I'm_  Greg, you magnificent arse." Lestrade growls and Sherlock shrugs.

"Your name is transport so long as I get your attention. Why are you here?"

"What, I can't fancy a vacation?"

"Not when my brother is with you. Mycroft, come out!"

"He can't because he's not here, Sherlock."

Sherlock's eyes narrow. "Forgive me if I don't believe you."

"I won't hold my breath." Lestrade scoffs and orders a pint from the bar.

"Neither will I." John says, getting up to join him.

* * *

They sit outside, underneath the lights and canvas umbrellas, amid the sounds of clinking glass and comfortable conversation. John's fingers trace the condensation from his glass through the rough grooves of the wooden table. Soft acoustic music strums through the open door from inside the pub. Birds flutter in the treetops of the woods behind them.

It's mundane and ordinary as anything. He decides that he quite likes this. The soft calm night feels like a balm to his soul.

Sherlock looks to him and their eyes meet. He looks drunk on the lethargy of the atmosphere, eyes lidded and mouth parted in a slow grin.

Calmness flows off Lestrade, cool and light like cream and laundry detergent but warm like baking sugar. The people around them feel similarly; tangs of sea breeze and leather and cedar. To John, there is nothing better. If only he'd known before that not all of this world was like London where everyone smelled of a pervading dampness like wet towels and he felt crushed under the heavy soot and charcoal scent. He laughs at the end of one of Lestrade's stories, and in the soft peace he feels a warm glow and looks to it. A woman meets his eyes, then looks away. Her core undulates, shifts and splits in two, and he knows she's carrying a child.

He's satiated with happiness, drunk on companionship and slow from easy conversation. He should have been more alert. Should have known what was coming.

There is a sudden long howl and Sherlock and John look to each other. It sounds familiar. Too familiar.

There is a high scream and then reality bursts at the seams.

The lights overhead are extinguished as the café is overrun in a tide of darkness and people begin to scatter wildly, tripping through the chaos. John can smell fear and terror and blood. He smells death, cancerous and noxious, as it fills the air. He feels everything. He feels them dying.

He is the one who acts first, toppling the table to the side as he leaps over it, tackling Sherlock and Lestrade to the ground as a giant mass of fur vaults over them, chasing their bolting prey.

John feels his wings flare, breaking through his control to cast shadows over the two men he's protecting.

"What the  _hell_  are those?" Lestrade asks, peering through John's feathers to get a better look of the invading creatures, inhumanly fast and dark and large.

"Do you remember what I told you about werewolves?" Sherlock says. "I hope from now on you take me more seriously,  _Greg_. And for god's sake keep your head down!"

They watch, half in shock and half in fascination, as the beasts swarm the grounds, a large hive of great black blurs, before their numbers trickle and disappear as the pack moves on to busier areas.

A stray Tenebest lands on the ground in front of them, sniffing and pawing at the dirt before its great head whirls at the sound of Sherlock's voice.

John's learned his lesson once already.

Before it can begin its charge, John reaches into the centre of the table, pulling the umbrella from its holder, and stands, ramming it through the beast's throat in a rush of blood and spattered muscle mass and movement. It collapses to the ground, a pained cry gurgling from its throat as it chokes on its own blood and dies.

Sherlock rises, he and Lestrade more than a little speechless by John's sudden merciless ferocity.

"John—"

"These aren't like Gladstone." John says, voice hard like a soldier's. "Sherlock, remember what I said about there being healthy ones?"

"Healthy  _what_ , exactly?" Lestrade cuts in.

A loud howl rings over the debris it caused.

"Let's just stick with calling them werewolves."

"Why are they here?" Sherlock asks as John rolls the dead beast onto its back. A shiny burn is imprinted in the skin above its heart.

_**נחש** _

John feels hot, raw anger fill the hollow where his heart belongs.

"Nachash."

* * *

They crash through the trees, trying to put as much distance between them and the wolves as they can. John needs them to be as far away as possible, but nowhere is too far where that damned _pustule_ of hatred and darkness won't follow. John is simply overcome by the desire to have Sherlock nowhere near it; he'll have to come up with a plan later.

John can hear Lestrade and Sherlock's hearts beating frantically, and he wants to pretend his would too.

"How are you, Greg?" He asks, leaping over a fallen log. "I forgot to ask earlier—"

"Oh, fucking  _peachy_ , thanks for asking!" Greg snarls as they run. "I've just got a pack of hellhounds running after me and a crazy demon possibly controlling them, but other than that my day's going  _great_ —"

"Sorry!" John shouts back. "Conversational etiquette! Hard habit to break!"

A loud howl— _train brakes screeching on the track, babies crying, metal on a chalkboard_ —slices through the quiet stillness of the forest as they crash through it.

Suddenly John stops completely.

Sherlock looks back to where he stands, staring up through a chink in the canopy, up at the moon.

"John?" Sherlock asks, out of breath, as he trots over to him. "John, what is it?"

"Stay here." John says sternly. "Greg, make him stay here."

"Sure, but what are you—"

" _John_!"

Sherlock lunges forward, but John has already spread his wings and pushed, shooting himself into the air.

* * *

He faintly hears Sherlock call his name before he flies. He knows he promised him his first flight, but this is different. As badly as he wants Sherlock to be in the air with him, there might not be a chance for a first flight if he doesn't do this.

The wind rushes past his ears, cold and fresh in his chest, and he's missed the feeling. He feels it part as his wings come down and up, pushing him through the fog and clouds that hang over the night.

He looks down, scanning the forest, through the tangle of branches and thickets, until he spots what he's been looking for: a thick pack of dark spots, moving at an inhuman speed towards the hollow where he left Sherlock and Lestrade. That's a problem, a very big problem. He needs to get them away, and quickly, but they're too heavy to take two at a time—and there's no way he'll leave one to fight for themselves no matter the chances of it happening—and they need to lose their scents  _fast_. It's begun to rain, a light sprinkle that will soon turn into a downpour, but that won't help them much.

"They're coming!" John calls as he lands, feet thudding softly on the damp ground. "They've caught the scent."

"Really?" Sherlock bites as he pants. "I thought they were calling for dinner."

"They are." John says sombrely.

"What's the plan then?" Lestrade asks, arms akimbo. "Try to lose our scent? Did you see a river?"

"I think I saw a small waterway; not quite a river, but it's still something. You'll have to follow it south, to the back of Baskerville research labs. It's close enough that you'd have a good enough chance of a scent overload; Baskerville probably uses it for runoff."

"You said _you_." Sherlock says quietly.

"I know." John replies, staring at him with that damned look that Sherlock hates that means he's trying to play hero.

His eyes narrow.

"John, if you're doing what I think you're doing—"

"Wouldn't dream of it." John smiles, but it's a bestofluckhopewe'realivetomorrow smile, not the one Sherlock wants. Not the I'llsurvivethisandwe'llhavebreakfasttomorrowandlaughthisoff one he wants.

Before he can do anything to stop him, John takes out his pocketknife—Sherlock really needs to moderate and hide all the sharp objects in the flat—and runs it harshly over his palm, causing a burst of atramentum to spill from his skin.

"Greg, he can't follow me." John says over Sherlock's shoulder, before his eyes turn to Sherlock's. "I can only distract them for so long, Sherlock. I need you to run, understand?"

"Will I ever get to decide that for myself one day?" Sherlock asks and sounds more wrecked than he'd like to.

John smiles, an I'mdoingthisforyousoyou'dbettersurvivethis flash of teeth heavy with sadness.

"Maybe." He says softly, brushing a stray wet lock of hair from Sherlock's face. "I love you."

He says it so easily that Sherlock wants to believe he says it to everyone.

"You're supposed to love me." Sherlock replies hoarsely, hair clinging to his face with rain and dirt.

John doesn't reply, but turns away, wiping his hand on the nearest tree.

"Greg." He says sternly, and Sherlock knows what that means. He knows Lestrade's hands will close over his arms before they do, knows that he shouldn't struggle even though he does anyways, knows that nothing he says will stop John but he says it anyways as he watches John rise from the ground and fly towards the howling he can hear in the distance.

It's only later, when he's running through the woods, when he hears John's cry of pain and a triumphant howl and turns away from Lestrade to run towards it, that it occurs to him that John didn't tell Lestrade he loved him or Mycroft or Molly or Mrs Hudson or anyone on the street or at the bed and breakfast.

He told Sherlock.

He only told Sherlock.

* * *

He'd tried. He thought he was winning, thought he was buying Sherlock and Lestrade more time.

A raspy exhale pushes from his crushed chest as it knits itself back together, putting the broken bone back together like puzzle pieces slotting into place. He'd forgotten the Tenebest had a proclivity for headbutting, right up until one of them had smashed its skull into the centre of his chest, cracking through the tough bone of his sternum. If he's had a hard, the bone would have pierced through it and he'd be nothing more than a corpse to bury.

He closed his fist around a cold piece of wet ground and raised himself up. His wings tremble, streaked with water and dirt and blood that was both his and theirs.

There were more of them than he'd thought. That was bad. Very bad.

He'd try. Convince himself that he's winning. Buy Sherlock and Lestrade more time.

He grips his ake-shift mace in his hands, called to him from where it lay on his desk at the flat, the same pipe that he'd grabbed in that dirty alley the night he fought Gladstone, and rises to his full height.

A wolf rushes at him and he brings the mace up forecefully, hearing the crack as it connects with the wolf's snout. He burns with power, and feels it pulse down his arm as he wraps it around and through the pipe, sending a sound like thunder across the plain as he buries it in the wolf's neck. It has barely time to whimper before it bursts in a spray of blood and charred chunks of spongy flesh.

He shifts his weight back before leaping at the nearest wolf, grasping it by its thick mane—so unlike Gladstone's—and hurling it into the trees as he lands, hearing the vertebrae in its neck snap with a loud crunch. He hears another one charge at him from behind, probably looking to grab him by the neck and shake his spine out, and he pushes upward, intending to clear its path so it rams into the trees, but it knows—he's  _predictable_ —and it catches him at the coracoid of his right wing as he rises and  _tears_.

John smashes into the ground, a rough cry jarred from his throat because it  _hurts_. It hurts so much, like his wing has been torn out from the root and a white-hot poker had been rammed into the open wound, searing him right down to the bone. He pants into the wet ground, smelling the thick scent of mud and dirt and grass as he hears the beast howl.

But he's not done yet. He can't be done.

He bites through the agony of moving as he struggles to his feet on shaking knees. Atramentum spills down his bare sides and the pain already feels far away, aching like it happened hours ago instead of seconds. He feels the sinews and skin seal themselves back over the bone, attaching it back to his body where it belongs.

John is just getting to his feet as Sherlock bursts through the brush and into the clearing.

_He'll never listen to anything I say, will he?_

He tastes concern, cold rain and fresh copper and rust, flowing into fear, crude oil and chipped ice, and the hot asphalt of rage.

He's pretty fucking angry himself. Angry that Sherlock didn't listen, angry that he came back, angry at himself for not keeping these things away from him, for not saving those people.

The heads of the wolves—what's left of the pack at least—snap to Sherlock, and John moves as they do.

He leaps over the blur of shifting muscles and fur, landing on the head of the leader and sending it crashing to the ground before he uses the momentum and springs back up, grabbing Sherlock and putting him behind him with one arm before turning around and feeling the icy sharpness of a clawed paw burying into his chest and tearing.

He falls.

He's failed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> varúð, Icelandic, n. -- caution, carefulness


	7. the wolves (act I and II)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Someday my pain, someday my pain
> 
> Will mark you
> 
> Harness your blame, harness your blame
> 
> And walk through
> 
> With the wild wolves around you
> 
> In the morning, I'll call you
> 
> Send it farther on
> 
> Solace my game, solace my game
> 
> It stars you
> 
> Swing wide your crane, swing wide your crane
> 
> And run me through"
> 
> "The Wolves (Act 1 & 2)" - Bon Iver

 

* * *

No.

_No._

Sherlock's mind is a high-vaulted ceiling and something is blaring static noise and he can't think—he can't  _think_ —and John isn't moving and the wolf that attacked him is coming back.

He moves forward without any plan, if only to throw himself over John and slow down the wolves before they hurt him more (he's not foolish enough to think he can stop them). He grabs at John's dropped metal pipe and stands in front of him, wielding it without having a clue of what his next move will be.

"He is  _not_ yours to have!" He snarls, willing himself to keep his ground as the wolves begin to stalk forward. _  
_

He decides that he will die with his eyes open, if it means John will live, when a high growl rips through the air.

Sherlock feels a swell of relief.

The wolves hesitate, unsure of where the loyalty of this new arrival lies. They believe it is with them.

"Gladstone." Sherlock calls and the wolf turns its head to him. "Attack."

With a vicious bark Gladstone obeys, throwing himself at the nearest Tenebest and burying his teeth in its neck in a gush of dark blood. As the wolves close in on him he throws himself into the fray in a spray of frothy red foam and bared teeth.

As soon as Sherlock is certain the wolves are preoccupied, he strides to John's side and collapses to his knees in the mud—he can always buy new pants, but John is astoundingly irreplaceable.

He is lying on his side in a puddle of mud and rainwater and an oily slick substance Sherlock doesn't want to acknowledge, too still to stop the rolling in Sherlock's stomach, the end of his free wing twitching pitifully, and Sherlock reaches out to roll him over.

He  _hurts_. He hurts at what he sees.

There is a ragged, dark hole torn in John's chest, gaping like the wet mouth of a cave. If he hadn't moved in front of Sherlock, if he hadn't gotten in the way, Sherlock would be watching his own heart pumping out blood in front of him on the wet grass, just as John had said. If. If. If.

"John, talk to me. Tell me how to help you. Is this like last time? Do you need water? Talk to me, John."

The most horrible, terrifying sound comes from deep in John's throat. He whimpers.

"Shrlk, I—"

He shuts his eyes. His words are slurred.

No no no no there must be a way to  _fix this_. This can't be it. This is not the end.

Amid the snapping and snarling of the wolves Sherlock hears feet splashing in the mud behind him.

"Sherlock? Sherlock, what happened?" Lestrade asks, out of breath as he slides to his knees beside Sherlock in a wet squelch. "Jesus." He hisses as he sees John, groaning and squirming as he tries to move. "What do we do?"

"If I knew, don't you think I'd be doing it?" Sherlock snaps at him before John makes a noise and Sherlock brushes hair from his face. "John, John talk to me. Your larynx is uninjured, so I know you can talk."

"He might be in shock." Lestrade offers. "Do angels go into shock?"

"Of course not, they don't have blood—"

"Sherlock, he doesn't have a pulse—"

"He doesn't have a  _heart_  you idiot! I thought that might be obvious from the  _hole in his chest_."

John makes a muffled noise as his hand comes up to grip Sherlock's collar. His grasp is stronger than Sherlock would have thought possible.

"Sherlock…leave me. You have to leave me."

Once, when he was a child, he hadn't listened to Mycroft and attempted to snark at a boy much larger than he was. The boy had retaliated by punching Sherlock in the stomach, leaving him breathless on the floor of the gymnasium, the hard knot of a plump fist feeling as if it was imprinted in his bones.

It felt very much like this.

Sherlock feels his chest collapse, a sharp shaft of ice spearing through his heart and impaling it in the roiling depths of his stomach.

He breathes in deeply through his nose and exhales.

"John," He says through clenched teeth. "I'm only going to say this once. You are an absolute idiot. You are the king of idiots, to think that I will leave you here to die for me."

"It's what I'm meant to do, I think." John murmurs.

Sherlock feels his heart lurch.

"Don't say that, John. Don't you  _dare_  die for me. I will not allow you to."

"Haven't got much of a choice then, have I?" He slurs back and Sherlock hears Lestrade choke on a reflexive laugh.

"You told me you had to be annihilated to die, and you've still got a body so therefore you've got something to fix. And I'm going to make sure it stays that way."

John's hand gently slides up his wrist. His touch is like a pianist lingering over their keys before they begin a sonata.

"I can slow them down."

If Sherlock had not had the exact same thought minutes earlier, when John had fallen into the mud and he thought the worst, he might have blanched. He might have been speechless.

But he smiles. Bitterly, like tasting lemons or seeing someone that you don't particularly care for but knowing you have to be polite.

"You can, but you're not going to. I won't let you."

"They can't kill me." John sighs.

The hole in his chest is drying, smooth patches of pale skin gleaming underneath the wet blackness.

"I wouldn't want to watch them try, mate." Lestrade chimes in.

"You're worth more than being Kibbles and Bits to a pack of supernatural wolves." Sherlock says lowly. "You are worth  _more_  than that. Lestrade…Greg. Help me lift him."

Sherlock is silently relieved that Lestrade doesn't ask any more questions than he needs to. He might be in awe of this fact, considering that he was a DI and curious by nature, if they all hadn't been in mortal danger.

They manage to bring John to his feet, wrapping each of his cold arms around their shoulders as they stumble back towards the town. The soft tip of John's wing brushes at Sherlock's ear as they move.

In the distance, they can hear howling. The fight is over. Sherlock doesn't know who won, but he knows he doesn't want that storage unit to be empty.

The woods are dark and they are blind. The blackness surrounding them is formless, cold and distant and unsettling. There's no knowing of what gestates inside it, of what horrible birth might take place that will be their end.

John's wound isn't healing fast enough; only half of it is gone. Sherlock is torn between irritation and gratefulness. It could have been worse, but it might not have had to happen at all if he'd listened. Once more, he's proven that John is vital to his survival. John, the balm to the burn of his soul. John, the cast to the broken bone. John, the candle light in a dark room, a beacon of soft goodness and safety.

And suddenly, as he stumbles through barely visible underbrush with an angel under his arm and a friend holding him up, Sherlock knows that he will not live without John. He can survive, sure, but he will not live. He won't, and it will be his death. He was halfway to the grave before John came. He'll throw himself in if he leaves.

It should scare him, knowing that John can destroy him entirely if he had a mind to. John can smite him where he stands and Sherlock would be alright, but he would be  _destroyed_ if John wasn't there. If he left. John could be a wrecking ball spiked with shards of glass and Sherlock would push him back and forth until he had enough momentum to crush him where he stood. He would do it, too. He would let John crush him. Ensconce him. Consume him.

It's not healthy. At all.

It's all he has.

* * *

John is asleep.

Sherlock sits beside their bed at the inn, watching over him. The water runs in the bathroom where Lestrade is washing off the blood and sticky blackness that Sherlock told him was ink.

_All your fault._

He told the inn that he wanted two beds. John had one at home; he would have one here, if he wanted. The inn keeper seemed to have had other plans. Or they were incapable of listening, that most basic human habit that many overlooked.

Sherlock never thought angels slept. They weren't human, so why would they need it? John said he liked it. It passed the time when Sherlock was occupied.

He never mentioned he might need it to recover. Sherlock wonders if it is because his body is different here. If John didn't realise that it might react this way.

_You did this to him. He trusted you._

He leans his head against the back of the chair. The sky is splashed with mottled wine. It's almost sunrise.

He closes his eyes.

_How many times will he die for you?_

* * *

When he snaps awake with a start, he opens his eyes to a dark sky. He knows inherently that the room is empty. Lestrade has left, if only for the moment. The sun hasn't risen yet. He doesn't know what's woken him.

Then he hears it. Soft, like fabric brushing against itself, but coarse, like sand rubbing against your palm.

Something thick and heavy slithers over the wooden floorboards with a hushed swiftness.

Sherlock stills, his eyes darting to John.

The feathers at the top of John's wings prickle outwards instinctively like the fur on the back of a dog's neck.

He moves to stand, but a warm hand has wrapped around his wrist. He looks down to where John is staring back at him.

There is a sudden bitterness in the air, like a foul smell riding on a brisk breeze. It smells dark and heavy, like smoke.

John snaps to attention, every muscle in his body tightening as his wings unfurl. He stands, a hand on Sherlock's chest to place him behind his body, and softly opens the door.

His bare feet creak on the wooden floor as he steps into the kitchen.

There's a low hiss, the sound of fissuring steam, no, of a snake, of  _the_  snake, of—

"Nachash…" Sherlock mutter. Something inside him flinches from the word. It didn't feel right to utter it, like calling an apple a fountain pen or sputtering profanities in front of one's grandmother.

He can hear the snake smirk as if the air around its mouth audibly parts.

It steps forward from the shadows.

"You can call me Jim."


	8. Nachash

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Tell me,  
> Do you think of me now  
> As I think of you?  
> For I could not have shaken the touch of your breath on my arm"
> 
> "I Walked" - Sufjan Stevens

_"Nachash…" Sherlock mutters. Something inside him flinches from the word. It didn't feel right to utter it, like calling an apple a fountain pen or sputtering profanities in front of one's grandmother._

_He can hear the snake smirk as if the air around its mouth audibly parts._

_It steps forward from the shadows._

_"You can call me Jim."_

John snaps to attention, every muscle in his body tightening as his wings unfurl.

"Oh, put those  _away_." The voice whines like a child on the verge of a tantrum. "You'll just embarrass yourself. Nothing I've never seen before, either. Old news, I'm afraid." It yawns.

The demon is decidedly  _not_  what Sherlock had pictured. He'd imagined horns and a bifurcated tail and cloven hooves and…well, not a normal looking man in a sharply cut charcoal coloured suit with bare feet mucking what looked like tar onto the floor.

"You've changed." John says solemnly.

"As have you." Jim answers. "You couldn't have tried for something better looking?"

John glares wordlessly.

"The same can be asked of you."

Both heads suddenly turn to Sherlock, as if they'd forgotten he was there.

"Sherlock Holmes." Jim grins. "We meet at last. I've always wondered what your voice sounded like. I thought about you a lot. Did you think about me?"

"You're…different than I expected."

"Oh?" Jim cocks his head, eyes sliding slowly to Sherlock.

"Yes. You're smaller, for starters."

Jim inhales heavily though his nose, his eyes never leaving the detective's form.

"I wouldn't say that if I were you. I've killed men for less than that."

"You have a pack of supernatural wolves to do your bidding too. I don't know which suggests your nature more."

"Sherlock," John whirls to face him. "Shut up.  _Now_."

Sherlock opens his mouth to protest but instead feels it snap quickly shut like a hunting trap.

"Oh, John, did you really have to do that?" Jim says petulantly, a pout on his face. "He has far more interesting things to say than you do."

"What do you want?"

Jim's eyes slide shut in utter irritation.

"What do you  _think_  I want from you?"

"You know the rules."

" _Rules_." Jim scoffs, shoving his hands in his pockets. "I hate that word. Rules. Implies I have someone to answer to…"

John says nothing, but his eyes narrow as he follow's Jim's movements.

"You know, those people tonight, down there at the inn…they deserved their end, don't you agree?"

"They were innocent."

Jim scoffs.

"Alright," He mutters. "If that's what you want to call it.  _Oh_." Jim snaps his head up and grins crookedly. "I've just remembered, I've got a joke, Johnny. Been saving it for a while, just for you, see. Okay…two adulterers walk into a bar, followed by a thief, a Pagan who carves figures of the Buddha, and a murderer." Moriarty rattles them off his fingers, a smile growing on his face. "They all sit separately, and—ha—" He breaks into a fit of giggles. "And a half hour later, a pack of wolves come and—ha—and  _rip them apart_! How's  _that_  for a punchline? Blood and bone and intestines all spattered on the walls!" Jim bursts out in peals of laughter, clapping his hands together as if he's just told the funniest joke in the world.

John says nothing, his hands tightening into fists.

Jim wipes at his eyes.

"It's always the ironic twists that get me, you know. Sinners dying at the hands of the wronged. It's wonderful, really."

"They were innocent."

"They were sinners, John, and you know what happens to sinners. You knew what would happen to  _them_."

"They were sinners by your code, because you twisted it to fit their deeds so you could punish them. They were not guilty to the rest of us."

"The murderer. I heard him beg for help. He cried out for mercy.  _Mercy_ , for a man that shot another in cold blood."

"He'd been wronged and he wronged in return. I heard his heart. He was remorseful."

"That makes him  _pure_?" Jim spits, teeth bared. "That makes him  _innocent_? Listen to you! Listen to your hypocrisy!"

"And the others? What of them? You've wronged more than they. A woman was pregnant, Jim."

"With a bastard."

"With a  _child_. You not only murdered innocents, you murdered a pure soul. No one will have you back now. Their blood is on your hands."

"Why would I want to go back to that  _hell_? That parched, dark hole in the pit of the cosmos?"

"You know I wasn't talking about Sheol."

Jim closes his eyes and breathes in deeply. Sherlock watches his toes wiggle in agitation.

"You're ruining the carpet, you know."

It seems that John, in his heated debate, forgot to keep Sherlock from talking.

Jim's eyes slide open and turn to him, filled with what Sherlock can only akin to glee.

"I must say, Johnny, I've never cared for your tastes much, but you've picked a winner. Here I am, reviewing the mass murder I helped initiate, and he's concerned about the  _carpet_! Oh, I  _do_  like him." Moriarty grins, eyes roving over Sherlock's form.

Sherlock ignores the bold hunger in his stare.

"What does he mean 'your tastes'?" He asks John.

"He's off-limits." John says, looking past Sherlock to Jim.

"To you, perhaps." Jim grins.

"John. What does he mean?"

"Oh, he's  _curious_." Jim breathes with fascination. "How adorable! Are you always like this? Do you come in another model?"

"You would have to pay a visit to my brother," Sherlock says tightly, "And I don't suggest or advise it."

"Pfft, humans. Think they know everything. You can't just get rid of me, Sherlock." Jim says with a smirk. "You can't just toss some magic water at me and  _wish_  me away."

"Who said I wanted to?"

The smile on Jim's face widens.

" _No_."

The air seemed to swell in the room as John steps forward, putting a hand on Jim's shoulder, which looked small under his palm.

" _No_ , Jim, don't you dare—leave him—" Jim turns his head to him and John suddenly stops, as if the words have lodged in his throat.

"John?" Sherlock moves to him. "John, what's wrong?"

"Shrlk—" John manages to choke out before his knees give out and he collapses.

Sherlock kneels at his side in an instant, wrapping an arm around the back of his neck. The black veins are appearing again, bold ink against his paling skin, crawling and skittering underneath the sinew and muscle like spiders.

"John! John,  _no_ —what are you doing to him?"

"I'm not doing anything." Jim smiles. "Just tuning him out of the conversation. He was becoming quite boring. I don't know how you stand it." He nudges at John's leg with his foot.

" _Don't touch him_!" Sherlock snaps. John's eyes flutter before closing and staying that way. Sherlock can feel his body soften with unconsciousness.

"My, my, a bit possessive, aren't we? Seems John's not the only one who doesn't share his toys."

"Tell me what you've done to him. Tell me  _now_."

"I've already told you, I'm tuning our dear John out, that's all. He'll be right as rain once we're done. You'd never understand if I explained it. Even a mind as great as yours is still human, Sherlock Holmes."

"Remove it." Sherlock snarls, straightening up to tower over Jim. "Take away whatever you've done."

"Why? Because you  _love_ him? That's supposed to make me grant your request?"

"Love has nothing to do with this—"

"It has everything to do with this! But oh." Jim suddenly stops, his eyes widening as a grin comes to his face. "You didn't know, did you?"

"Didn't know what?"

"Poor little detective. So curious…so eager to know everything…and you haven't even realized that you love him, and he can never love you back." Jim pauses, thinking. "Although, I'm sure he would if he was allowed to, which would have made this adventure  _so_  much more delightful, I can assure you. I'd love to just take you apart."

"What do you mean, if he's allowed?"

"Surely you weren't naïve enough to think he came here just for  _you_." Jim drawls out the last word.

Sherlock says nothing.

"One thing you must now about my brothers, the beings you call angels, is that they will lie to any and all humans they meet. They're jealous, see. Not too keen on being number 2 since your kind came along. They hate themselves for it, too. They hate themselves for a lot of reasons, really. I can assure you, John hates himself for loving you."

"You said he wasn't allowed to."

"I say lots of things." Jim shrugs. "I wasn't allowed to send a pack of Tenebests onto the humans and look what happened there." Jim grins with half-lidded eyes. "No, no, he's been a traveller in the desert for thousands of years, crazed with thirst that's been blurred with hunger and you call to him like a glass of cold water, with droplets _sliding_ down the side and the ice clinking softly together."

" _No one seemed to take into account just how beautiful human beings are, how warm and…" John swallows. "Alluring."_

"He's a little  _too_  perfect, isn't he?" Jim smirks as he circles Sherlock. "He came along and you let him in, but you never do that with anyone, do you? But he's different…he  _understands_ you. He protects you, tells you what you want to hear, answers all the thoughts you've got in that brainy head of yours. He consistently knows what you want, always. A little suspicious, don't you think?"

Sherlock says nothing, and stares into Jim's face, into that crooked smile and those black eyes.

"I'd love to tear him to pieces in front of you, Sherlock, I really would. Watch you squirm as I deconstruct him, as I take you apart and show you what he really is. What those  _angels_  are. How they use humans like you as chess pieces, knocking your kind, stupid with love, off the board. You're starting to become one of them. You're starting to reek of goodness. I did so love your act of bravery tonight, falling over him like a lover, taking up his weapon like he was a fallen commander. He wouldn't do the same for you. Know that. So...do me a favour, love, and get rid of him while you can."

"If you come back here," Sherlock says lowly. "I will end you."

Jim stares at him, the smile falling from his face.

"I'd like to see you try." He responds. "Let's see how well you do after your angel abandons you, after you've served your purpose and he leaves you to be fodder for the wolves. I'd never do that to you, Sherlock, never. John, however…let's just say he might not be what you think he is."

Sherlock's eyes dart to John's prone form, and Jim's never leave the detective's face.

"Food for thought." Jim murmurs, his gaze darting over Sherlock's mouth and neck, as if he wants nothing more than to bite into them. "Ciao, Sherlock Holmes."

With a great gasp of air from John, many things happen at once.

Jim disappears. No plume of smoke, no fire or magic tricks, he's just  _gone_.

John rises, sitting up.

And Sherlock,

Sherlock falls.


	9. acid

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "I walked, because you walked  
> But I won't probably get very far  
> Sensation to what you said  
> But I'm not about to expect something more"
> 
> “I Walked” - Sufjan Steven

A fine silence, like settled dust, blanketed the room. Neither John nor Sherlock moved, each unwilling to be the aggressor that disturbed the stillness, each unwilling to break the silence.

“Sherlock—”

“John—”

They stopped, each finding themselves suddenly treading on the trepidations of the other.

“I—”

“What—”

On the couch in the living room, Lestrade snored loudly.

A careful smile crept on John’s face. Sherlock suddenly despised the kindness in it, envied the ease of its appearance, like nothing bothered him.

John closed his eyes for a moment and his smile gentled into a reluctant grin.

“Do you want to talk…somewhere else?”

* * *

 

“I don’t understand.” Sherlock says, turning his head to him.

John sighs, wings twitching from the cold bite of wind, and wraps his arms around his knees. The two of them sit side by side on the roof of the inn, the green landscape stretching before them in the buttery dawn, as if last night had never happened or didn’t matter, as if the Earth kept turning despite the beasts that pawed on its face and tracked filth on its body.

“Where do you want me to start?”

It sounded like John expected a simple, untangled answer, not the snares and knots of questions Sherlock kept snagging himself on.

“Nachash—Jim. He said…a lot of things.” Oh, brilliant Sherlock. Well done. So eloquent.  He said a lot of things. Mummy must be so proud of your demonstration of your public schooling. Another wonderful linguistic elucidation by a Cambridge graduate.

“Yes, he did.”

“Are you…he was lying, right? That’s why he came.”

John smiles forlornly.

“Which question do you want me to answer first?”

“Was he lying?” Sherlock breathes.

“Not exactly. He wasn’t telling the truth either.”

“Will you then?” Sherlock makes a noise of frustration and cards a hand through his hair. What is it about John that made his thoughts so unloquacious? “I mean…will you tell me the truth?”

“I can’t lie to you, Sherlock.” John says with a smile heavy with sad honesty, a crease of guilt weighing down the corners of his mouth.

“You’re avoiding something. Tell me and get it over with.”

“I think…this is going to sound mad, but I think when I came through, when I came to you, so did he.”

“You think you opened the door long enough for him to come in?”

“In a nutshell, yes.”

“The night we met, you told me you were summoned here. Was it him?”

“No, I—maybe. I don’t know. He might have.”

“That means he used something else to get here.”

“Or someone.”

“Could he use an angel?”

“He is an angel, technically. He’s a Watcher, like me, and the ancestor of Seth, who was the father of the rebel angels. An antideluvian to the core.” John catches Sherlock’s stare, furrowed brow and hard eyes as if he’s trying to remember something. “Did you delete that?”

“Religious information has no use to me.”

“So that’s a yes, then. Antideluvian is the period between birth of the angels after the Earth was formed and before the Great Flood.”

“A giant wave overtaking the earth with a crazy old man gathering all the existing flora and fauna in one rickety boat?” Sherlock says dryly. “The plausibility is overwhelming.”

“Humans have a different story about the Great Flood than we do. We—my kind—we mean the deluge of humanity, the birth of your history and your ancestors. Nachash was born with me and my brothers and sisters.”

“So he’s the black sheep of the family?”

“Yeah, he’s the redheaded stepchild.” John grins and Sherlock finds it hard not to respond with his own.

A warm orange glaze spreads over the ground beneath them, bleeding above with the purple and blue of the dawn.

“The sun’s rising.” John says, staring into the horizon. “A new day.”

“Looks a bit like a bloodstain.” Sherlock remarks. “Appropriate.”

“I can’t believe he did this.” John hisses quietly. “We have rules concerning your kind. We aren’t supposed to hurt you, or get involved.”

“It’s too late.” Sherlock answers. “Both of those have already happened.”

“It’s one thing to be with you like I am,” John states, “It’s another to sic a pack of wolves on you.”

“Did you know they were here? When I took the case, the client spoke of a rabid hound. Did you think then—”

“That it was a Tenebest? It…occurred to me, but I didn’t think it was possible. I didn’t think he’d do this.”

They fall into silence, each trailing through their own thoughts.

“What did he mean 'your tastes'?”

John’s jaw tenses for a moment before he speaks.

“In all of humanity, few people have caught my eye. Three, to be exact. The other two…they were a lot like you. Very special to me, very…human. I watched over them, made their lives a little better if I could manage it, but—” He pauses, retreating farther into the shadows of his memories. “In the end, I left them. I thought they’d be better off without me. I—well, as long as I’m being honest the…the loneliness of it all got to me. I felt like a voyeur, always watching but knowing they’d never know my name or what I’ve done for them. I didn’t mind though, mostly. I loved them.”

“In the forest, earlier, and in my room, before we left…you said you love me.”

“I did.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

“Is it…is it because you have to or because you want to?”

Because there’s a large difference, John.

“Because I can.”

“Do you love other things like you love me? Do you love me as much as you love a tree or a patch of grass or another person?”

John pauses for a moment.

“Or a shoe?” Sherlock adds, if only to prolong his answer, but he doesn’t know why he doesn’t want to hear it (except maybe he does, somewhere).

Please don’t tell me you love Mycroft like you love me.

“You.” John answers. “Only you.”

Sherlock smiles in a way he’s never done in his whole life, save for the night after he dumped John in a bathtub and woke up beside him the next morning.

One of them lays a hand on the other’s and one of them tangles their fingers together. Neither is sure who did it first and neither particularly cares. Sherlock’s only concerned with the feeling that he will never let John go, that he will never be the one that drops his hand away first.

Together, they stare out into the soft dawn, the hills undulating beneath them and the thin clouds wavering like curtains over a veiled sun. A proper English morning.

Sherlock suddenly realizes that it’s not raining. The sky is clear, for the first time since John arrived.

“He’ll come after you, you know.” John says after a moment. “Jim.”

“Why?”

“You let him know you were interested. He’s never going to let you go.”

Sherlock’s hand tightens over his.

“I felt her fear last night. The woman he set those wolves on, the one…” John stops, swallowing the crack in his voice. “With child. It was sharp and it stung, like battery acid and alcohol. She died wanting to save her baby. Wanting it to live. He slaughtered her, and her child. He killed innocent people, and he’s going to come for you. I can’t let him continue. I have to destroy him.”

“Are you saying you’re going to fight for my maidenhood, then?” Sherlock asks, attempting to avoid the subject of the creeping darkness of Nachash. “How quixotic of you, John.”

John turns to look at him, his eyes hard. Sherlock knows he’ll plunge into the darkness, if he has to. Sherlock also knows he will follow him, because he needs to.

“You are not his to have, Sherlock. You are your own.”

“If I asked, would you let me be yours too?”

John’s face is soft in the morning light.

“If you’ll have me.”

They stare at each other for a moment. The wind brushes Sherlock’s hair. A smile comes to his face and his breath steams in the cold air as he huffs out a laugh.

“I’ll have you. Of course I’ll have you.”

* * *

 

“Should I ask where you’ve been or do I not want to know?” Greg asks, looking up from the paper as John and Sherlock walked into the room.

“I’m surprised Mycroft hasn’t already told you. Knowing him, he’s already installed cameras on the roof. Has he rigged the treeline yet or has he not been able to actually get himself into the tree?”

Greg stares at him blankly for a moment and John feels a tingle of the hot dry sand and mossy heavy brick of impatience on his tongue.

“He did call, good deduction there, because he found out we were attacked last night and he was worried. He’s not as uncaring as you think, you know. And…well, we have a bigger problem.”

Greg shuts the paper and tosses it to them.

_Wild Hounds Kill 4, Wound 3 In Weekend Attack in Devonshire, Similar Incident Reported Near Regent’s Park_

“They were in London last night, too.” Greg says solemnly. “They were looking for you.”

“Was anyone attacked?” John asks, scanning the article.

“No. Mycroft had to calm down that poor landlady of yours, though. Said she told him she saw a man try to break into your flat.”

Sherlock perks up and turns to Lestrade.

“Is she alright? Was it—”

“She’s fine and I’m not sure if it was Jim or not.” Lestrade says, hands scrubbing over his face. “Can’t very well send Mycroft a photo now, can I? Neither of them knows what he looks like.”

“That would explain why he came here so late, then.” John says gravely. “He was trying to find us in London first.”

“What are we going to do?” Greg asks. “How do we get rid of him?”

John turns and paces a few feet before turning around, his wings folding in behind him.

He speaks the moment Sherlock does.

“I’ll call in my sister.”

“We need Quinn.”

* * *

 

She wrung her napkin nervously beneath the table, pale eyes glancing around the patio. Two women sit at the far end, near the door, on a date by the looks of it. A man sits alone across from them, staring solemnly at his plate as he pushes his food around. Three men sit at a table together a few feet away from her, all good-looking and calm; she hates them, then. Hates how carefree their smiles are, like they have nothing to worry about. But then, no, she shouldn’t feel that way; it wasn’t fair to them, they must have troubles too, just…not so immediate or serious as hers, but still they must be there. It was funny, how beauty seemed to solve their problems. One of them—not the rugged one or the beautiful one that looks to have climbed out from a Manet painting—laughs and his gaze darts to hers briefly as he looks around the lawn. She suddenly gets the oddest sensation from him, like everything will be alright, like her troubles have melted like butter in the sun of his smile, and she feels safe. It will be alright. It will.

“Hey. You look wonderful.”

Her gaze snaps back, up to the man standing in front of her and she smiles. Good, he made it.

He pulls his chair out and sits and she feels a sudden sense of how lucky she is that they are here, together. That he’s in her life.

Fucking mood swings.

“What wine do you want?”

“Oh, I can’t—it’s um, up to you.”

Tell him. Tell him. Tell him. He needs to know.

He already has three children with his wife. He doesn’t want more, he said so.

This is his child. Our baby. He should know. He’s getting divorced, he’s moving out so we can be together, he needs me, he needs this. Tell him.

His gaze sweeps over her and she gets the feeling that he can see through her. That he knows. He must. Oh God, he knows.

“Are you alright?”

She thinks she might rip then napkin she’s tearing it so hard.

She looks up at him and smiles, opening her mouth to tell him I’m pregnant, and she blinks.

When she opens her eyes, a stunned expression is on his face. She frowns. She hasn’t said anything, why would he—

He slumps back in his chair, the momentum causing his head to snap back—

And fall off, rolling to the ground.

A wolf, a huge fucking wolf that just fucking killed him, just swiped his fucking head off, turns and looks at her.

She screams as it lunges towards her.

_Oh God, let me live. Let it live. I can’t lose this, I can’t lose my baby._

The blonde man stands.

She thinks he has wings.


	10. Quinn

John and Sherlock turn to each other, speaking uninhibitedly at the same time.

“You have a sister?”

“Quinn?”

They pause.

“Okay, we’ve got to stop doing that.”

Sherlock nods and motions for John to continue.

“Who’s Quinn?”

“My brother. Well, half brother. Father didn't know of him until I found him. Apparently he had a midlife crisis and subsequently lived a bit recklessly.”

“Brother?” John’s face belies his disbelief. “You never said you had another brother.”

“Oh yes, he’s a faceless lackey for the government, which is where he takes after Mycroft, and is astoundingly precocious, which is where he takes after me.”

“Yeah, your parents haven’t had anything to do with that.” Lestrade says dryly.

“It’s a wonder my parents managed to procreate someone of my intelligence, much less Mycroft or Quinn.”

“You’re so humble. Cheers.”

“Sherlock,” John cuts in before he can retort. “You don’t have a brother.”

“Please, John, we may not be a typical family, but at the very least we still share some semblance of genetics—”

“No, I mean you _don’t_ _have_ a younger brother.”

“What do you mean? Of course I do. He’s a posh, annoying know-it-all that started as a happy surprise to my parents and an inconvenience to me.”

“So another version of you then.” Lestrade mutters. “Wonderful.”

“Sherlock—” John stops, trying to corral his thoughts. “I’ve never seen him, not in all the time I watched you—”

“He never visited me or Mycroft. We always went to him."

“My range wasn't restricted to just your house. I could see you wherever you went. He wasn't there, in any circumstance.”

Sherlock said nothing.

“Do you think you just didn’t notice him?” Lestrade asks. “I mean, maybe he was around but you were too focused on Sherlock.”

“No,” John shakes his head. “I felt four souls in that house, and one when Sherlock was alone. I would’ve noticed.”

“Maybe he’s defective.” Sherlock suggested with a pique of something close to eagerness.

“Doubtful.” John answers. “People see what they want to with me, so he may not have been able to see me, but I would have seen him.”

 

“Right.” Sherlock says, standing. “Back to London.”

* * *

 The carriage rocks leisurely as the countryside blurs and shifts in muted greys and soft gold behind the grainy window. John stares out, letting his mind roam the plains as they pass in front of him. The undulating motions of the train has already threatened to put Lestrade to sleep, and he’d excused himself to walk through the halls.

“You never let a case go unsolved.” John says plainly, keeping his gaze on the horizon.

Sherlock doesn’t answer, eyes skimming over his phone, and John has learned enough about him to be patient and wait until he answers instead of repeating himself. He knows that Sherlock has perfectly fine ears.

“Plenty of cases have been unsolved under my supervision.”

“Not since you were still a junkie and never voluntarily abandoned.”

“I felt our work in Baskerville was done.”

“You never even visited the client!”

“Would you rather we stay and risk another attack, another visit from dear old Jim, or would you rather we be on the move, where he’ll be looking for us instead of finding us?”

“He found you once.”

“Us, John. He found _us_ once. We’re in this together. He’s nearly killed you twice now, three if you count Gladstone, and that’s thrice as many times as I will allow. You’re in just as much danger as I am.”

“He’s set his sights on you. Not us. You. He’ll find you, eventually, and I’d rather be destroyed or worse, be sent back to Sheol, than let him get his hands on you.”

“I won’t _let_ him.”

“Sherlock,” John says wearily. “I don’t think this is something you can control. You’re dealing with something much greater and much more powerful than yourself.”

“Says you.”

“Says me, yes. You’re human, Sherlock, whether you like it or not, so you’re already at a disadvantage. I know this isn’t what you want to hear, but you have to know that when he comes after you, he’s going to get rid of me first. I don’t know what that entails, destroying me or incapacitation—you saw what he did at Baskerville—or banishment, but he’ll want you alone. He’ll want you vulnerable.”

“He’ll kill me?”

“No,” John says softly. “No, I don’t think he will. You’re the biggest prize on his shelf. I don’t think he’ll want to tarnish you. He’ll hurt you though, if it means weakening you.”

“He can’t hurt me.”

“Trust me, Sherlock, he most certainly can.”

“No, I mean he can’t hurt me because if he sends you away first, if he does away with you or whatever you think he might do, I’ll off myself before he can start.”

“ _No_.” John says, his voice full of such sudden coldness that Sherlock nearly flinches. “No, you will never kill yourself, Sherlock, you have to promise me you’ll never do that.”

“Why?”

“I can’t protect you then. Wherever you go here, on this earth, I’m going to follow you. I can’t do that if you kill yourself, if you sacrifice your soul for an eternity of darkness.”

“I thought Sheol was Hell. We’d be together.”

“Together? _Together_? Nothing is worth being in that pit, Sherlock, _nothing_! Not your soul, not us, not anything!” John’s voice cracks and he stops. “It’s—I know it’s hard for you to understand…you haven’t been there. But I have, and I’m telling you now, you will _not_ send yourself there. We wouldn’t be together; that would be like trying to find each other in the dark with miles of emptiness full of danger in between. You won’t know if your next step is your last.”

Sherlock says nothing, but leans forward, his eyes never leaving John’s.

“If it meant finding you, being with you, I would do it.” He says slowly, carefully. “I would walk whatever distance I had to, for you.”

“I can’t be your end, Sherlock. I can’t.”

“And I can’t live a life without you, now that I’ve known what it’s like. We’re at an impasse, then.”

The tracks scream underneath them for a moment and Sherlock is reminded of the sound John made when he fell to him. He wonders what sound it would make when he left.

“What would you do, if you lost me?” Sherlock asks solemnly

John stares at him.

“I would find you.”

They sit in silence, full of a handful of heartbeats from one and nothing from the other.

Sherlock breaks the quiet, his voice calm and solemn.

“Then what makes you think that I feel any differently about you?”

John is spared having to answer by the carriage door sliding open as Lestrade enters.

“Right,” He says, breaking the tense invisible chord wound between the two as he sits beside John. “We’re about twenty minutes out. Where are we going once we get back?”

“An apartment near Hampstead.”

Lestrade’s brow raises. “Hampstead? We’re going posh then.”

“We’re paying a call to my brother. Poshness is the least of your worries.”

* * *

An hour later, the three stood outside an [old homely brick complex](http://goo.gl/maps/7WK1K) situated opposite a heavily decorated building that screamed expensive living, covered in cream décor and large windows. Lush green ivy and aubergine pimpernel swarmed over the gate and face of the façade, giving the apartment the atmosphere that it had weathered its existence with quiet dignity, letting itself be claimed by the flora and ignored by passer-by until its appearance and old age belied its true worth, which must be in the double-digit millions of pounds considering the area. It was inconspicuous; it didn’t draw attention to itself but stood like a wallflower among its expensive looking neighbours, camouflaged by a door the colour of night stuck between its death and dawn and the pale trimming along its simple windows.

After a moment’s hesitation, Sherlock rang the callbox.

“You have visitors, little brother.”

A beat of silence follows before a heavy sigh falls from the speaker.

“I’ll let you in.” A tired voice crackled.

“Oh, you can walk. I’d have thought you were soldered to that chair. May I check the state of your atrophied limbs or have they already been hacked off?”

“Do you want to come up or not?”

“It would be rude to leave guests out in the cold. Think of what Father would say.”

The intercom clicks off and the sound of a door shutting comes from the open windows of the second floor.

The front door opens, revealing a lanky youth with a tousle of wavy dark hair, narrow face framed by thin, sharp glasses. His impassive gaze drags over Sherlock, who stands unmoving in front of him, blocking his view of Lestrade and John.

“Quinn.” Sherlock says in greeting.

“Sherlock.” His brother replies.

“How's the job?"

"Interesting." Quinn answers shortly. "Yours?"

"The same. I see Mycroft’s string-pulling is as effective as always.” Sherlock answers.

“As he should be.” Quinn answers dryly with a sardonic grin. “I do own the whole building. You really should think of getting on his better side." His smile dropped from his face. "Why are you here?”

Sherlock steps aside and motions to John. “Him.”

Quinn says nothing, his mouth parting slightly, eyes widening behind the frames of his glasses.

“It’s you.” He breathes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The reference for Quinn's flat (obviously slightly different, more details next chapter): http://goo.gl/maps/Psx56 (5 Windmill Hill, London, UK)
> 
> Next chapter: Why John couldn't see Quinn, why Quinn knows John, and Harry makes an appearance. Thanks for reading!


	11. Tea Time

Two cups of tea sit untouched, tendrils of heat steaming above the cream coloured porcelain.

Lestrade awkwardly sips from his cup, glancing around the room from his seat beside Sherlock. John shifts in his chair, his wings cramped, itching to stretch. Quinn’s gaze, nearly as analytical and calculating as Sherlock’s, rests on his brother.

“Are you sure you don’t want tea?” Quinn asks John, slowly shifting his gaze to him.

Sherlock looks down to the table, noting that Quinn hasn’t touched his cup either.

“How do you know who I am?” John asks calmly.

“What do you mean?” Quinn smiles with a hint of bemusement. “I’ve always known who you are. You’re an angel. I could see you since I was six.”

John glances at Sherlock.

“Just me?” He asks, gaze turning back to Quinn. “Or were there others?”

“Just you.” Quinn says solemnly.

“You’ve a lovely home.” Lestrade says as he looks around the room. “You said Mycroft bought it for you?”

“Yeah, he owed me a favour.”

“Enough to buy you a flat?” John asks disbelievingly.

Quinn grins.

“It was a very large favour.”

John looks to Sherlock, currently engrossed in something on his phone, and, as he glances back to Quinn, he catches the reflections in the mirror above the fireplace.

“Where’s your loo?” He asks, forcing a polite smile to come to his face.

“Down the hall.” Quinn answers.

John stands and catches Sherlock’s eye, knowing as well as he does that John’s shift into human form didn’t exactly include toiletry needs, the same way his body didn't necessarily require food.

He heads down the hall, waiting until he hears the conversation begin again before he carefully turns the bathroom light on and, while still in the hall, shuts the door. Pausing a moment, he holds out his hand and, with a sharp tingling moment of concentration, shifts the lock until he hears the bolt slide into place. He turns to head down the stairs, willing each step to remain solid and quiet under his feet.

He reaches the second story landing, the air still and pregnant with silence and settled dust.

John frowns, reaching out to swipe a shelf. He draws back his finger, a thick layer of undisturbed dust coating it. His skin begins to crawl, as anyone who is alone in an uninhabited hall that reeks of hasty abandonment is wont to do. He shouldn’t go further. He should go back and ask Quinn, go back and Sherlock and Lestrade out of here.

He steps forward.

The hall is painted a gloomy, empty blue, the colour of the ocean as it recedes to darker and deeper water where great pits of nothingness begin to form and the edge of knowledge has been reached as the sand bottoms out.

Three doors line the hall, two on one side and one on the other, one closed and the rest open. He glances into the first as he passes.

The room is a mess, books and papers littering the floor, bloodstains marring the tangled bed sheets.

John takes a deep breath through his nose, his knuckles white as he grips the doorframe. He can smell the sting of sulphur, and his gaze catches a pair of clawed feet singed into the floor.

Innocents.

Everything in him, every atom that formed him when he came to this realm, rebels, telling him to turn back to the stairs, telling him to destroy whatever that being is that did this before it struck again.

Yet again, he steps forward. He has to know what else has happened, he has to know what this creature is capable of.

The second door is askew and he rests his hand on the knob before he pushes it open to look inside. The space in his chest where his heart should be beating contracts, folding in on itself.

Broken toys litter the floor, a mobile hanging half-destroyed over an empty crib.

He turns on his heel and strides to the closed door, no longer caring if he made noise. The others must have noticed he’d been gone long enough.

He rips the knob out of the door in his haste. It swings open, banging against the wall.

The breath leaves his lungs as he’s swarmed with the residual sharp cold fear and claustrophobic terror that was all that remained of the late tenants of the flat, rooting him to the floor and pressing every molecule in him into each other, as if willing him to disappear from the weight of it all.

His eyes snap open, hard and stony.

He will end this. Whatever it takes.

* * *

_How is she? SH_

He sends the message just as he hears John ask where the loo is and looks up to him, half-querying. John didn’t need the bathroom. Curious. He watches him disappear into the hall, but decides not to press the issue.

Sherlock eyes his brother as Lestrade sets down his empty cup, the china clinking against the saucer. The silence between them has coagulated into an unsteady tension, neither having enough of both experience anf familiarity with the other as well as the natural inclination to make small talk.

A loud ring suddenly chimes through the flat, and Lestrade reaches for his pocket to answer his phone, excusing himself into the hallway.

“Your friends are interesting.” Quinn says with a sardonic grin. “An angel and a policeman. Quite the crowd.”

“Wrong." Sherlock replies evenly. "Watcher and Detective Inspector. You never mentioned seeing John to me. “Why?”

“I thought you’d think I was crazy. People hide things from each other when they fear the consequences, like when Mycroft hid the fact that you broke your mum’s vase when you tried to test the velocity of your marbles and taws.”

“How could you know that?” Sherlock asks, his gaze narrowing. “I was 12 then. You weren’t even a consideration yet, much less a person.”

Quinn stills. “Lucky guess.” He says with a shrug. “Father may have mentioned it once.”

“I never mentioned that to Father. He never knew it was me.”

“Maybe Mycroft told him.”

Sherlock doesn’t respond, his thumb idly tracing the rim of the teacup.

His phone beeps and without his eyes leaving his brother, he pulls it out.

_Stable. Are you back in London? MH_

He supresses a sigh, fingers flying over the screen. Quinn picks up the cups that Sherlock and Lestrade have finished, moving to the kitchen to clean up.

_Can’t you have asked Greg? SH_

_No response. Are you with him? MH_

_Yes, currently in Hampstead, at Quinn’s flat. SH_

_Who may I ask is Quinn? MH_

Sherlock scoffs. Mycroft's ability to be insufferable is a god-given talent.

_Quinn, our dear baby brother. SH_

_Sherlock, we do not have a younger brother. MH_

_Yes, we do, from Father’s midlife indiscretion. SH_

_Father was eternally faithful to Mummy, take my word. I would have known of another brother by the collective brown-nosing of the extended family. They do so love a family secret. What led you to the conclusion that we have an illegitimate brother? MH_

_Nothing. Forget I asked. SH_

Sherlock’s gaze darted up, to the mirror above the fireplace. The hair on the back of his neck rises, as if answering the call coming from the back of his mind that something is fundamentally  _not right_ here.

“Quinn?”

“Yes?” Quinn’s voice comes from behind him as he moves around the kitchen.

Sherlock’s eyes narrow.

His reflection should be in the mirror.

“I think someone rang downstairs.”

“Really? I didn’t hear it.”

“No, I’m sure I heard it. Check from the balcony.”

“Always proactive when it comes to inactivity, aren’t you?”

Quinn strides to the double doors and goes out to lean over the balustrade to see the doorway. As soon as he was over the threshold, Sherlock springs up and shuts the doors, grabbing a broom and sliding it through the handle so Quinn was locked out.

“John?” He turns, calling into the flat. “John!”

“Sherlock, what the hell?” Quinn asks through the glass. “Let me in—”

“You’re not my brother.”

“What? Of course I am!” He says, banging on the panes of the door. “Stop this, let me in!”

Sherlock stares at the face before him, a face that seems foreign in a way it hadn't moments ago. It’s as if he’s suddenly looking at a stranger…as if he’s never met this man in his life.

“Liar.” He says coldly, his voice heavy with accusation.

The handle stops jiggling and Quinn steps away from the door, his face calmly passive.

He smiles.

“Look to your friends, Sherlock Holmes.”

Mind whirring, Sherlock turns, the ground churning under his feet.

The room fell out of focus for a moment, blurred and smudged in the centre of his vision.

“John?”

He’s on his knees. When did he fall? He wants to be sick, his stomach rebelling against his body, churning poisonous hot bile that threatens to rise in his throat. His head feels heavy and flat, void of rationality, muddling through the tangle of trying to function. His body is sluggish, slow in movement and slower in thought.

“Sherlock.” John is at his side, a hand on his shoulder. “He’s not your brother, Sherlock. He never existed. He’s a demon from Sheol; he disguised himself and killed the other tenants. He planted a false memory on you. Sherlock? Do you hear me?”

Sherlock’s head swam, his thoughts trickling away, disconnected and slow. He’d heard John, heard all the things he said, he just couldn’t make _sense_ of them. Something was wrong. Something—

“John…” He slurs, grasping at John’s collar. This was important and he felt himself fading. “John, I—think he drugged me. Lestrade too. In…t…tea.”

He hears John suck in a breath before he feels himself being dragged away, down into darkness.

* * *

“ _Fuck_.”

John looks down at Sherlock and Lestrade, unconscious at his feet.

“Fuuuuck.”

He drags his hands through his hair.

Fantastic. Two weeks on Earth and he’s already picked up both obscenities and the failure of heeding his instinct.

The banging at the door has stopped. At least it’s realised that trying to get back in was a futile effort. John thought the demon would have chucked all the salt in the flat in the bin as soon as he’d arrived, but he’d been pleasantly surprised that there was enough to cover the doors and windows.

He should have seen this. He should have known. Should have listened to his gut, to that crawling feeling he got when he came in. But even then, Sherlock and Lestrade already drunk the spiked tea, and he’d have no more of an idea what to do with two unconscious men on the streets of London as he did now—

_Mycroft!_

John drops to his knees and fumbles for Lestrade’s phone, digging it out of his jacket pocket.

_Okay…you can do this. Sherlock told you how. Just…damn. Okay, what does this do—_

He sighs heavily as the phone shuts off.

_Wonderful. You’re aces at this John. Truly, just the best._

He holds the button again until the phone turns on, and fiddles carefully with a few more before managing to unlock the phone. He finds Mycroft’s unanswered texts and somehow—he’s not quite sure, but he won’t question it—through a rough mashing of buttons he places a call to Mycroft.

“Gregory? What happened, Sherlock isn’t answering either, are you alright—”

“Mycroft, it’s John. Long story short, please don’t think too hard about this, but a demon took the form of a human and fooled Sherlock into thinking he was your brother.”

“Yes, Sherlock had mentioned as much to me.”

“What, wait, he _knew_?”

“No, he was under the assumption that we had a younger brother and I informed him that we, in fact, do not. What’s happened?”

“That thing spiked their tea; they’re passed out on the floor. Sherlock locked him outside and I put salt around the entryways so he can’t get back in. Mycroft, there are _bodies_ here. Downstairs. This creature has _murdered_ people. God knows what other things it’s capable of.”

“I’m on my way. Keep the phone on. Keep them safe.”

“I will.”

The line clicks off and John places the phone back in Lestrade’s pocket, straightening up to look back out the window, where the sun dips behind the silhouetted horizon. A figure is dark against the glass, standing on the balcony, unmoving. Waiting.

John opens the door, careful to keep the line of salt intact.

A man turns to him, entirely different than its earlier form, Quinn’s lanky, thin figure replaced by a taller, fuller bulk, meant to tower over him, meant to be imposing. The clean-shaven narrow face has been replaced by a faint scruff and strong features, the look of an undefeated soldier, its brow steady with unwavering loyalty. The wind blows against cropped blonde hair, clawed feet tap against the wooden boards, carrying the smell of sulphur over to John, not that he needs confirmation of who he’s looking at. He knows all too well the demon that stands in front of him.

It smiles, teeth sharp and glinting in the dim light.

“Hello, love.”

“Azazel.” John says shortly.

The grin widens.

“While we're here, do call me Sebastian, won't you?”


	12. Azazel

The cool night wind brushes at John’s temple as he stares across the line of salt at Azazel, now in the form of a man of mold.

“I’ll call you by your true name and nothing else. What are you doing here?”

Azazel’s eyes narrow playfully.

“I can ask the same of you. If I’d known my brethren have let themselves be leashed like a loyal little guard dog…” Azazel taunts with a sardonic grin. “I might have come sooner.”

“Your purpose?” John reiterates coldly.

Azazel throws out his arms, smooth and lined with thick muscle.

“Whatever my summoner wants me to do. Who’s got you on a leash?” His teeth flash behind a crooked grin. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”

“I don’t know.” John answers.

“Well if you don’t know, then I don’t either.”

“Why did you kill those people?” John asks lowly.

“Jim wanted it.”

“ _Puppet_!” John snarls, anger flaring at such callous flippancy. “You _coward_ , you’ve completely forsaken what it means to be—”

“I’ve forsaken a lot of things.” Azazel cuts in calmly. “Are you a puppet John? No? Are you sure you’re not? I see doubt in your eyes, you know. Ah…you don’t think…no, impossible.”

“What?” John asks, eyes narrowing. Azazel licks his lips and leans forward as if he’s sharing a secret.

“You don’t think that…surely, Sherlock doesn’t wind his hand around your spine and feed you his clever little words—”

“Tell Jim he can’t have him.”

“Oh, he hates getting old information. You already told him. I think he’s received the message.”

“I have recruits coming. They won’t allow him to get what he wants.”

“Jim’s used to disappointment. He’s patient now. He’s learned to wait.”

“That’s all he’ll be doing.”

“Tell me, why so protective of our little meatbag?”

“I’m his Watcher—”

“I mean other than that. You think all the Watchers have liked their humans as much as you do? You think they'd move as fast as you do when he's in danger? Why him? Why is he so special?”

“Why don’t you just ask Jim that?”

“He won’t tell me.”

“Well then, you'd better get used to disappointment too.”

Azazel narrows his eyes for a moment, taking a short breath through his nose before his gaze turns towards the wall, as if he can see through it to where Sherlock lies unconscious on the floor.

“I’m not the only one with a… _proclivity_ for humans, am I?” He asks slowly. “Can’t blame you, really. They’re so… _warm_. So alive and wet. The sounds of their heartbeats are purer than the trumpets. And the noises they make when you fuck them? Beautiful.” His smile fades as he takes in John’s solemn countenance. “Don’t tell me the two of you haven’t—oh John, you prude, you’ve got all the right parts, you don’t know what you’re missing—”

“Yes, I do.”

“Ooh, look who’s coming out to play! Who’d you fuck with that angelic cock of yours?”

John remains silent, staring coldly at the demon, whose eyes burn with delight as he steps forward.

“You _haven’t_ …but you _want_ to. You want to fuck Holmes, do you?” Azazel grins, leaning against the open doorway. “No one’s stopping you, Johnny. Just yourself.”

“It’s against our laws.”

“Pfft, our laws. Didn’t stop me. Didn’t stop my ancestors, or yours.”

“I won’t be his ruin.” John says solemnly.

Azazel looks down at him, the glee draining from his face into a sober stare.

“I think you already are.”

“I’m his protector—”

“Then you will be. You’re going to ruin him, as surely as I ruined the others I touched. I felt them rot in my arms, their souls shrivelling away like dying blossoms—”

“Why _him_?” John hisses. “Why now?”

“I gave them swords and blush.” The demon murmurs. “I made them incandescent with death and beauty. Those were gifts, and I was repaid with a fall.”

“Why me?”

“Because I want you to fall with me. I want you to know how it feels when you pass through the earth and know you can’t climb your way back up. I’ve been dropped to the bottom of the pit and I want to pull you back down just like all our brothers do in their black hole hearts when someone escapes Sheol.”

“And Jim? Nachash? He escaped long before I did. Go after him. Leave us here; our fight isn’t with you.”

“Your fight is very much with me. Jim let me sweat, but he got me out, didn’t he? You left. You left me and our brothers down there to burn and didn’t look back. And who said I wasn’t going to drag Jim down with me? If I’m going down fighting, I’m taking as many as I can with me.”

“Spite and hatred don’t look well on you.”

“And piety makes you look bloated.” Azazel snaps. “Stop pretending you’re one of them. You’ll never be an angel, John. You know what they’re like. They’ll never accept you for anything other than what you are. An outcast.”

“Better that I aspire to something that I might have than try and get back in the good graces of those whose faces I’ve spit in—”

“Careful, John.” Azazel says with a cold grin. “If you’re going to talk like that, you’d better be sure your fortress is secured.”

“What do you—” John freezes, his head slowly tilting down to the floor.

His toe has edged over the line of salt. The seal has been broken.

He looks back up, body tightening, preparing for the blow even before Azazel slams into him, driving him into the wall behind him.

Plaster and wood crumple against their combined weight as John’s body breaks through it. He feels splintered wood and chunks of drywall slice and beat his skin, feels the opening of new wounds that will become old in moments. Azazel lands on top of him and he kicks out with both feet, catching him in the stomach and sending him flying back through the hole and smashing against a large bookcase by the balcony doors. Books and loose paper fall around him as he struggles to get up and John grips the edges of the ragged hole punched in the wall as he lifts himself back out of the wreckage. His palms slip on the roughened plaster, slick with atramentum that has nothing to heal. It smears over the pale paint and glistens in the dull light like a night sky reflected in dark water.

Azazel stumbles to his feet and launches off the bookcase, but John has planted his weight solidly and is ready to meet him this time, taking the brunt bodyweight and using the demon’s forward momentum against him, spinning him until he’s pressed against the kitchen cabinets, pinned by one of John’s hands that’s wrapped around his throat. With savage intensity, John rears his strength back and uses it to send Azazel’s head slamming into the cabinets once, twice, three times, until a dent is left and the wood shatters on the fourth impact. Slick blackness, like tar, coats Azazel’s face and he spits at John, trying to blind him momentarily as he brings a leg against the counter and uses the leverage to push against him, knocking John onto the island counter. The demon pins him with his legs, one on each thigh, and straddles him as he wipes the inky plasma from his face. Grappling blindly behind him, he manages to snag something John can’t see until it’s in front of him, above him: the silver flash of light against a large kitchen knife meant for thick meats like what his body’s become. He struggles as Azazel forces one of his flailing arms down, but it’s in vain, as the demon brings the knife down and buries it in his left arm, at the crook of the elbow, so far deep that it embeds itself into the countertop.

John cries out, feeling the metal slice through tenuous tendons and lean muscle, feels it knick slick solid bone, and Azazel reaches behind him again, snagging another smaller knife from the stand.

“Hold still.”

“That won’t kill me.” John pants, feeling the counter become slick under his body as atramentum spills out over his new wound, but it won’t heal with the knife intruding its progress.

“I know.” Azazel grins wildly. “I just want it to hurt.”

He leans down and brings the knife close to the centre of John’s forehead, tracing the delicate skin with the edge of the blade. He’s just distracted enough with making John squirm that he loosens his grip on John’s arm and John takes the opportunity to wrench his arm from the demon’s hold and shove his palm into his shoulder, knocking Azazel off-balance long enough to pull the knife from his arm with a wet squelch. He spins it in his palm as Azazel thrusts forward and buries it to the hilt in his throat.

“That’s enough talk from you.” John growls, and, using the beat of surprise, knocks the demon off him, struggling off the counter as he checks his arm. The wound has already become a dull ache, and he can see the glistening pale white and wet pink of muscle knitting itself back together.

Azazel thrashes on the floor, trying to get a hold on the knife’s handle through slippery black-slicked fingers, but he doesn’t have enough purchase to pull it out. John raises his hand, palm open, and calls up his mace, that unexpectedly reliable pipe, and brings it across the demon’s face in a sharp crunch of shattering bone. He lets his mace clatter to the ground and drags Azazel up by his collar.

“You will tell him—” John rasps into his ear, his blood singing. “You will tell Nachash that Sherlock is not his to have. If he touches him, hurts him, _talks to him_ , I will end him. I will _destroy_ him. I will burn him alive in the fire where he belongs.”

Azazel stares at him for a moment, his eyes blazing amid the mused blackness coating his face, and spits at him.

John brings his mace to the demon’s temple and unceremoniously knocks him into an otherworldly unconsciousness.

“ _What the bloody fuck is going on_ ‽”

John banishes his mace and stands. His legs feel odd, as if they’re filled with churning water instead of muscle and bone. He leans against the wall, the red at the edge of his vision fading out like the tide, a thick cloud blowing past the moon so the light shines again.

Lestrade stands in the doorway, mouth open and eyes wide.

“Greg,” John starts, heading, stumbling, towards him, his head swimming with pain and passion. “This is Azazel, a demon that’s been summoned to your realm. He implanted false memories in Sherlock’s mind, convinced him he had a younger brother and took its form. He drugged you, he attacked me, Nachash sent him, I know he did—”

“Calm down, John, just…give me a minute.” Lestrade breathes, carding a hand through his hair before rubbing his face. “Christ, I’ve got the worst headache right now, it feels like a bloody hangover...”

“What’s a hangover?”

“Remind me to take you to the pub sometime so you can find out.”

John smiles.

“I’d love that. Has Sherlock woken up? How is he—”

He’s cut off as something blurred and hard barrels into him harshly, arms wrapped around him like a garrote.

Azazel.

He registers shattering glass and a sharp pain as his body smacks the metal railing of the balcony before he’s tumbling off it, Azazel’s weight forcing him over and down.

And he is falling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, that was an interrobang in it's natural habitat!
> 
> A note on Azazel:
> 
> While he's second in line for who's responsible for the first human corruption (Nachash, the snake, being first in Hebrew lore), in the Hebrew tale, God commands that Azazel should be bound "hand and foot and cast into the darkness: and make an opening in the desert – which is in Dudael – and cast him therein. And place upon him rough and jagged rocks, and cover him with darkness, and let him abide there forever, and cover his face that he may not see light.”
> 
> Azazel, stuck in a pit in the desert (this story's Sheol), can only return to Earth for Judgment Day, but I used the mystical powers of plotlines to bring him out of the pit, if only to move this story forward.
> 
> Thanks for reading, everyone!


	13. thin air

The fall feels eternal. Azazel must be having flashbacks. John sympathises.

The ground seems a million miles away. It’s begun to rain again, as if the sky is trying to wash away the proof of their existence. He can see the droplets of water pass his face, he can see the light in them reflected from the streets.

As they fall, his wings burst out in reflex, (to do what they are there for and  _fly)_  raindrops splashing against the soft speckled brown. He feels each one as it bursts against the mottled down, feels the weight of each dampened feather as it grows heavier with water.

He uses the momentum to twist around, gripping the demon’s collar so he hits the ground first, although it won’t do either of them much damage.

The ground parts beneath Azazel’s body like the surface of the ocean as he collides with it, pressed into the earth by the John’s weight. Dazed, the demon lies in his own hole, and John stumbles up as rainwater drains off the street and trickles down his eyelashes and mouth and cheeks, dirty with grime and gritty bits of asphalt. He climbs out, wiping at his face with his sleeve, when Azazel comes to his senses and grabs his ankle in a vice grip, hard enough to break bone. John feels the crunch, the taunt tendons and muscle snapping like a broken violin string, and gasps in pain before he’s flying through the air again, pitched into the opposite building by Azazel’s wild throw. He feels his body make an indent in the bricks and he tumbles back down, splashing in a puddle on the pavement.

Before he can come back to himself, he’s being lifted by an iron fist wrapped around his throat as Azazel shoves him against the wall. John brings up his knees and kangaroo kicks him in the chest, savouring the sound of shattering bone as his breastplate caves, the force sending him skidding across the pavement, kicking up chunks of asphalt and road.

“John!”

His gaze snaps up to where Lestrade bends cautiously over the broken balcony.

“Is Sherlock awake?” He calls up through the torrential downpour of rain.

“No, he’s still passed out. Suggestions?”

“Keep—”

He’s cut off as Azazel barrels into him, knocking him down into the road, and he curls into himself, using his knees to spring the demon’s weight off him and sending him careening into the gutter.

“If he wakes up,” He yells hoarsely at Lestrade’s silhouette, “keep him away!”

“I’d ask if you need help—” Lestrade begins as Azazel launches himself at John, who plants his weight and grabs the demon by the shoulders, vaulting him into the roof of a nearby car, which crushes under his weight. “—But I think you’ve got this!”

“Just keep him away! Mycroft is coming. Don’t let him do anything stupid!”

“Which ‘him’?”

“Both of them!”

Lights are beginning to turn on in the surrounding flats as people wake up to the noise outside. John can’t let them see this. Even if they can’t see his wings, even if Azazel looks as much of a human at a distance as he does, they will see their bodies tear up the streets like sheets of paper and they will be scared. Azazel does well with scared; his forte, his mastery, is manipulating fear. It won’t end well, if they stay here. It won’t end well if people start to fear him.

John has one option.

Draw him away.

Azazel staggers to his feet, ragged claws scraping the cement. His hair is matter with atramentum, globs dripping onto his shoulders and muddying his clothes.

He’s smiling.

Lestrade begins to speak.

“John, wait, don’t—”

His voice fades away quickly as John rears back and  _pushes_ , his wings beating powerfully as he launches himself into the air.

Azazel grins.

“Oh John…” He sighs, molecules unwinding into smoke as he calls himself away, as he wills his atoms to  _follow that fucking birdman if it’s the last thing you do_  and he feels himself sucking into nothing and everything, his voice lingering for a moment after he vanishes into thin air. “Always running. Well, if that’s the game you want to play...”

* * *

 

*     *     *     *     *

* * *

Sherlock hears voices as he awakens. His eyes open slowly to a dark room. Distantly, he wonders why it’s his but he doesn’t know why. John must have tucked him in. Why does his head hurt? It aches with a dull pulse, like the whole of his skull is a tender bruise being prodded. He tosses the covers back and swings his feet over the side of the bed before standing on unsteady legs as he heads towards the voices. Neither of them sounds like John. Odd. He must be watching and not have anything to say. He does that.

“It’s not prudent, Gregory…” Mycroft begins tartly.

“Oh please, will you stop with the formalities?” Lestrade’s irritated voice answers. “Ours cocks have touched, the very least you can do is call me  _Greg_ —oh, Sherlock, uh…hello.”

Both men turn to the bleary-eyed detective, who is currently looking about the room like a drunk eyeing a bar.

“Where’s John?” He slurs.

The two look at each other and Sherlock sees an unspoken knowledge pass between them. An agreement of something they won’t mention.

“Sherlock, you should sit down.” Mycroft says with care, which means he’s trying to baby him, which means something Not Good has happened.

“Joh—whsJohn?” The words tumble from his mouth, butchered by a heavy tongue. Why doesn’t he remember anything?

“Do you remember anything?” Lestrade asks and Sherlock glares at him.

“Obviously not.” He murmurs. “‘M gonna sit now.” He half-stumbles to his chair, where he curls into himself.

There it is. That bloody  _look_  again, passing between them. It’s just about as blaringly obvious as their sexual habits with each other, which Sherlock can tell by the position of Mycroft’s tiepin and Lestrade’s left sock, but he doesn’t want to think about  _that_  right now so much as  _this_.

“We should just show him.”Lestrade says solemnly. “What channel do you think it will be on?”

“Most likely…all of them.” Mycroft answers.

“Right…where’s the remote?”

Mycroft responds by turning on the telly, which has already been tuned to a news station. Sherlock suspects Mycroft has already perused the channels to censor them for his brother if he could. He doesn’t feel right. It’s not so much the headache as it is the lack of John in the room. Where is he? What aren’t they telling him?

A woman’s talking; she clearly wants to be taken seriously in that pantsuit. Better listen. She’s having an affair with one of the cameramen. How pedantic.

“—all of whom are in critical condition—”

The story changes, the picture shifting to a bright ball of light falling through the night sky.

“Back to our breaking news, reported just minutes ago and currently in development, a meteorite has been reported to have crashed in the Italian park area of Kensington Gardens. Onlookers reported a bright flash of light to have suddenly appeared in the sky around 12:30 this morning before it vanished above one of the park's large ponds. While no official inquiry has been issued as of yet, the area has been cordoned off by a government response team, although one bystander managed to capture the event on their mobile. Have a look.”

A grainy video feed fills the screen, shaky and unsteady with the motions of the hand that’s holding it. Sherlock can tell the owner is a drug dealer. Why else would they be in a dark park at midnight with those motor reflex skills? Their camera is focused on one of the greater ponds that were built to look as if they went on for metres and not miles, the lens facing outwards, away from the railings and sculptures and towards the dark shadows of the treeline.

A sudden burst of light blooms in the sky, far above the ground, and its intensity brightens as it plummets to the earth. The person recording seems to be on a hallucinogenic of some sort, as, in Sherlock’s opinion, they seem to be overreacting to a meteorite, if the profanity was any indication…

Then he hears it. The whistling, high and clear.

He freezes. His brain slows, jams in a grinding, painful halt.

_The world seems to burst into the brightest white, as if it's split open._

_There's a high pitched screech, like car brakes, like a child crying, like something falling through the air at a high velocity._

As the ball of light hits the water, he swears he can see a figure in it. A figure with wings.

John.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: A Fight in Kensington Gardens


	14. The Long Water

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "You are the bird whose wings came  
> when I wakened in the night and called.  
> Only with my arms I called, because your name  
> is like a chasm, a thousand nights deep...
> 
> What shall I call you? Look, my lips are lame.  
> You are the beginning that gushes forth.  
> I am the slow and fearful Amen  
> that timidly concludes your beauty."
> 
> "The Guardian Angel", Rainer Marie Rilke
> 
>  
> 
> Guys...I'd just like to say I'm really sorry for this.

 

  


* * *

*     *     *     *     *

* * *

Mycroft and Lestrade share a glance as the news story ends and Sherlock continues to sit there, staring at the telly as if there’s more to be gleaned from it.

“Sherlock…”

His brother stands and turns and Mycroft knows that look in his eyes will be the thing that kills him one day, that heady, single-minded recklessness that caused overdoses and stab wounds and an angel falling to earth for him.

“Take me there.”

* * *

*     *     *     *     *

* * *

The car hasn’t even stopped moving before Sherlock stumbles out, nearly falling over himself in his haste. By the time it screeches to a halt and Mycroft and Lestrade get out, he’s far ahead of them, sprinting through the stone promenade towards The Long Water, that stretch of dark river past the park.

Sherlock knows John is close. He knows exactly where to run to, and later perhaps he’ll wonder why. He’ll wonder if it was because he wanted to know or if he was driven by the fact that he didn’t and couldn’t live without knowing if what he felt had happened had truly happened. He runs over rain-slick stone and grass, soft and cold in the night, and he feels like he’s dreaming. Like he’s flying, maybe, somewhere. Like John promised. As he gets closer, his heart begins to hurt like a stretch of string that’s being pulled in all directions even though it’s reached its end. There, in the distance, in the night, he can see it.

He can see where a pale body is floating.

“No…no… _John_!” His scream echoes across the still lake.

John doesn’t move.

_No no no give me something make him move I can’t do this again this can’t be it please please not him not now—_

He sheds his coat at his feet and nearly impales himself on the tall iron bars guarding the edge of The Long Water as he vaults over, into the cold shallow water.

“John!”

The body floats. Is it a body or is it John?

A body or John?

Body or John?

_bodyorJohn?_

The water’s getting deeper. That’s fine. He can swim.

_John John John don’t do this to us, don’t do this to me, you can’t, you’re in one piece, you’ll be fine—_

The image of those dark, black veins on John’s face pulses through his mind as he reaches what he wants the most and the least.

The first thing he notices: One of his wings is bent at an awful angle—nearly a perfect right angle, the scientist in him notes—the soft down ruffled and snapped and shedding. That’s no good. He can’t have that.

The second: The black veins are back. Where they once skittered like trapped insects under John’s skin, now they are clumped like the floating bodies of dead fish.

The third, the unspeakable third: He is not moving.

Sherlock sees the droplets of water on the soft feathers and they look like ink in the night. Like atramentum. Like blood. He traces the curve of John’s shoulder and raises his hand to the light. There, in the soft night shine, his palm is dark, slick with blood that isn’t his. There’s a hole in his shoulder. Why is there a hole in his shoulder? Why hasn’t it healed? Why is there blood—

Blood? John can’t bleed, he can’t bleed  _he can’t bleed_ —something’s wrong, something’s not right—why is he getting heavier, why won’t someone

“Help me.” Sherlock whispers then realises Mycroft and Lestrade are farther away than he thought. “ _Help me_!” He screams. “Why are you just  _standing_  there? Help me!”

Someone’s wading in the water, slowly. Not as fast as he wants. He wants running, he wants hurried splashing—a frenzy—because it means there’s something to be done to save him. Save John. That’s all he wants, all he’s ever wanted.

_Don’t let it end like this._

A hand rests on his shoulder. John’s skin is smooth under his wet palm. Feels like wind, like the softness of air.

“Sherlock…” Mycroft says softly.

“No…” His grip tightens on John’s arm. “No.  _No._  He’s not. He can’t be, he said they have to be destroyed, he’s right here, he’s right  _here_ , he can’t just _die_ , he’s right here…he can’t…help me, Mycroft, you’ve got to help me. He’s getting heavier, he’s sinking, come on.”

His brother does nothing but stands there with a look Sherlock’s only seen once. Just once, when Mycroft told him their father was dead.

_Don’t let it end like this._

“Sherlock.”

He looks up to Mycroft. Water’s gotten on his face. He’s not crying. He’s not. There’s nothing to cry over.

John’s slipping from his arms. He’s getting heavier, as if his blood is turning to lead. He won’t let him. He’ll be awake soon anyways.  He can’t drown. Angels don’t drown. Angels don’t  _die_.

“Let him go.”

_LET HIM GO? Ha! You’ve lost it. You must be crazy. I’m not letting him go I’m not I can do this let me do this I can save him—_

“Sherlock, let him go.” Mycroft repeats, but Sherlock’s grip grows tighter. He’s shaking his head and he can’t stop. More water on his face. Why? There’s nothing to cry over.

More splashing. Someone’s joined them.

“Help me.” He hears Mycroft say softly.

_Good. Help is good. Help means there’s something to save._

A strong hand comes around his shoulder, pulling him back, away from John, away, no that’s not what he wants,  _no no no no NO—not what I want, he’s getting farther away, it hurts, this hurts, I can’t do this, I have to save him, take me back_

“ _Take me back_!”

He’s screaming now. It’s bouncing in the night like his voice is trapped in a dome, some great big rock he can hide under. His brother and Lestrade are taking him away. John’s just floating there. He’s not moving, _this can’t be it, this isn’t the end, it can’t be, John’s in one piece, he’s right there and he’s sinking, it has to be me, I have to save him—_

Feathers. He can see feathers loosen from John’s broken wing as they float to the top of the water. John’s face sinks under the surface. There, in the middle of the Serpentine River, it swallows him up like a snake who’s been waiting, jaws open. Like Nachash.

_No._

_No_.

_Don’t let it end like this._


	15. shock blanket

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay and shortness! I'll be out this week, but the next chapter's already been drafted so have no fear!

Cold dew begins to cling to the edges of John’s feathers as he climbs higher into the clouds. The night is quiet around him. It always is if you fly high enough, the noise and nightlife melting away until an unrivaled hush rises around him.

London twinkles below like the stars above, millions of lights that mean something to someone down there. The view is new to him; the last time he was here, it was burning. The last time he flew through the smoke and chaos of the destruction of man by his own hand. Now he flies above a different battlefield, only, in some ways, it’s very much the same.

His wings beat against the air, reveling in the welcome stretch after a long absence. It’s been too long since he last flew. He’d settled too far into his stagnancy after Gladstone’s introductory assault; the flight from the pack of Tenebest had proven that. He’d only relied on flight when he needed it, and now he wishes he’d flown for pleasure more often. He’d forgotten how free it feels, how nice it is to believe he’s free, high above everything. Sherlock should know how this feels. He’d promised. He regrets never taking him.

His mace, wrapped tightly in his fist, is getting colder, icy to the touch as it sticks to his warm palm. He scans the black sky as he coasts through it, an antigen in a blood stream, yet he knows it will do him little good. Azazel doesn’t fly the way he does. He appears, usually when unexpected, as it benefits him.  When he attacks, he’ll make sure to catch John off-guard.

“You’ll be damned.” John says to the air, but he knows who’s listening.

“Threaten me with something new, brother. I’ve been damned for a while.”

John’s wings billow out and curve, slowing him to a steady hover as he turns towards the voice.

Azazel floats across from him, arms crossed.

“You’d face the pit again,” John calls in the vast hush, “knowing what waits for you if you fall a second time? You’d do that for him?”

“I’d do anything for him.” The demon answers defiantly, but makes no move to draw a weapon. Somewhere high above, an airplane flies softly above them. The space above their heads is never quiet, never still, always in motion. Always something moving up there.

“Why?” John queries.  “He’s not your way out. He won’t help you out of the pit if he can push you back in and save himself.”

“I didn’t see you scrambling to help me either when you got out.” Azazel says as he arches an eyebrow. “By the way, it’s just been _eating_ at me…how _did_ you get out, exactly?”

John says nothing.

“Keeping our secrets, are we? What’d you do, John? What deal did you make to get that piece of meat you wanted so badly? You haven’t even bedded him yet. Makes me wonder what was so important about him that you had to forsake all of us, tripping over our bodies in the dark so you could get your cock wet.”

“I did nothing I regret.” John answers solemnly. “He’s more than meat to me. He’s worth it. If we didn’t do anything but breathe and blink in one minute, it would be worth a thousand lifetimes of Sheol as long as he was there and he was mine in that moment. He will always be worth climbing out of that pit. We all have our reasons for wanting to get out. You’ve got yours, and he’s mine.”

Azazel’s eyes flicker over him for a moment, his expression hesitant.

“What’s it like?” He asks lowly.

“Sorry?”

“Having something good in your life. When you close your eyes and open them again and it’s still there. What’s it like?”

John narrows his eyes in suspicion.

“I’m not trying to trick you, John. You know our kind don’t have much experience with good. You may be the first in centuries to truly know it.”

“I…it feels like…” John sighs, searching for the right words. “It feels like crawling around in a darkness packed with heat and sweat and fear and breathing in a wisp of fresh air. It’s not much in the moment it happens, until you breathe it in and you realize just how good it was, how you want it to come back even though you know it’s leaving you.”

“Holmes, your…something good. He breathed it in yet?”

“I…I don’t know if I hope he has or if he’s done it already. He knows my time here is limited, but I don’t think he understands. He likes to believe he doesn’t know better about things he cares about. I think his brain’s just waiting for his heart to catch up.” John lets a small knowing smile flicker on his lips. “Humans do tend to be the most careless with the most delicate things. I think he thinks I’ll be around for the rest of his life.”

“Jim, he can help you, you know. Whatever deal you made, whatever fate you got yourself into, if you help him, he’ll help you. He has the power. You know he does.”

“He’s lying to you, Seb. I don’t know what he promised you, but he’s not going to do it. He’s not going to save you.”

Azazel’s face furrows, and when he speaks, his voice is raw and John knows he’s speaking with more honesty than he’d ever had before.

“This is your last chance.” His voice rings through the darkened quiet. “I don’t want to kill you, John. You don’t deserve it. Couple of Watchers like us, here…when was the last time that happened?”

“London was burning then.”

“And we saved it. We can do it again. It’s still burning. We could do great things. Don’t make me do this. Don’t make me be your end. Don’t let that warm-blooded battery down there be yours. You can do better.”

John smiles ruefully. “That’s not for you to decide. He’s already planned it, hasn’t he?”

Azazel stares at him. John purses his lips and nods in understanding.

“I get it, then.” He says softly. “I get it. You have to do this. I’m the last wrung of the ladder to get you out of the pit.”

“You’re the last wrung.” Azazel repeats in confirmation. “Jim just wants you gone. What does he care for a single human? For _your_ human? You know what he’s like. He’ll drop your toy if you forget about it. He just wanted to play because it was yours.”

John shuts his eyes. He’d suspected, since he hit asphalt and looked up into the face he’d watched for years, since he’d heard that voice that was all he’d had in the darkness, that it would end like this. Nothing that started so perfectly would end so happily.

“Harry?”

“She knows.”

John nods. He stares at the city beneath him. He’s glad he got to see it burn so brightly without a fire to kindle it. He’ll remember.

“I’ll see you later, then.” He says, turning his eyes to the demon.

“In the dark, down there? One can only hope.” Azazel replies somberly.

John lets his mace fall from his palm, whistling through the air as it plummets to earth. They’re over water now. He won’t hurt anyone.

How could he know, as he was sent to fall after it in a burst of light that swallowed his breath, swallowed his whole being, that he’d hurt someone, hurt him grievously, and most of all.

He doesn’t feel it when it happens. The spear had passed straight through him, clipping his wing and sending him dropping like dead weight to the ground. A clean strike; a mercy. As he falls, he wants to scream at the unfairness of it all. He was supposed to have another day with Sherlock. He was supposed to pick him up from the rubble of that flat and take him home, clean his wounds, make him smile.

It wasn’t supposed to end like this, even though he knew better. He just didn’t want it to. Not like this. He didn’t even get to say goodbye. Couldn’t even remember the last thing he’d said to Sherlock, but he hoped it was good.

 _Don’t let it end like this_.

As the water wraps around him, he thinks it’s not so bad. He’d had something good in his life for once. His end meant Sherlock’s continuation, meant he might have some more good things before all was said and done.

He had every confidence in him. He wasn’t leaving. Sherlock wasn’t alone. Not really.

_I don’t think I’ll ever be done._

* * *

_"Will_ _I know? When your time comes?"_

_“I don’t know. I hope you will, but also that you won't because you'll know just how precious the time we have left is, and that's a great and terrifying thing, to know that what we have isn't permanent. That it ends."_

_"I know that already."_

_"Do you?"_

“Yes.” Sherlock says in the hushed darkness. “Everything ends.”

He sits curled up in John’s chair, knees tucked into chin. His limbs ache with stagnancy and he can’t shake the feeling that he needs to be doing something, but he can’t quite bring himself to leave. Gladstone lies at his feet, his great body stretching before the fireplace. Mrs Hudson fainted when she saw him.

His clothes stick to his skin, still damp with river water. Mycroft had insisted he change. Lestrade had given him one of those godforsaken shock blankets. His fingers had cramped from gripping it so hard. In another life, he’d laugh at it, at how utterly useless he’d become. He’d heard stories of people going into shock after losing someone they loved, and he’d scoffed at it. He knew he’d never do that. He’d never loved anyone enough to care. Blind men don't know the pain of staring at the sun. But this, this terrible spiral, sucking everything from the world down inside, leaving him bereft and alone like floating on open water. This was unbearable. A life without John was unbearable.

John’s gone.

Gladstone lifts his head and tucks his ears back as he nuzzles against Sherlock’s leg.

When did he get down on the floor?

Sherlock lets the beast lay its hulking skull in his lap as he absentmindedly strokes the soft fur. His hands are shaking, curled around the small metal pipe he'd grabbed from the water, clung to as he was dragged away from John, from where he disappeared into the water. A low, broken whimper stutters from his lips before he can stop it. He wonders if this is what being broken feels like, a slow crack appearing in a used pane of glass, the final blow that shatters him.

It had been so sudden. John had been here not 24 hours ago, alive and smiling and whole. No one could be taken away so quickly. It wasn’t possible.

It wasn’t fair.

Just yesterday, they’d had so much time. He’d had days, months, years worth of John. So much time to learn everything he’d wanted to, to plumb the depths of who John was, what made him laugh, what made him angry, and only now, now that he’s gone, Sherlock realizes he had learned nothing. John had known everything about him, and he had learned _nothing_. What was the use of such _great_ intellect if he hadn’t _used it_? He’d done nothing. It wasn’t fair. He’d had so much time.

_No. This isn’t over. I’m not done. I’m not done with him._

“Gladstone.”

The wolf looks up to him as he stands.

“Come. We’re going out.”

_I don’t think I’ll ever be done._


	16. The Almost-Dr. James Mortimer

Mists fell over London, slicking the dark streets and thickening the shadows of the alleys. The sidestreets were relatively empty, most inhabitants tucked into their night at the pub or in their own beds. Only the lonely populated the quiet corners of the city, unnoticed, acknowledging their brethren in silent greeting.

No one nodded to Sherlock Holmes that night. Not with that beast at his side. It was gigantic, possibly some kind of Great Dane? It must hold some sort of record for its size...purebred breeders these days, didn’t they know when enough was enough? That thing was the size of a bloody Shetland pony. It was a wonder it was even civilised...

Sherlock was given a wide berth, a whole side of the street to himself and to Gladstone, and he was grateful. Side glances, slight avoidance, but no outright panic...they must think that Gladstone is some sort of record-sized dog and, after all, _humans don't often go out of their way to see realities they don't believe in_. The Tenebest had come in handy so many times. He had John to thank for that.

John.

Some part of him hadn’t yielded to the ache yet, to the hurt that seemed to pierce his entire being. Some part of him wasn’t ready to let go, to admit that John might be gone, permanently. He’d known it might end like this—that it _would_ end like this, John had told him as much—but this little sliver of himself had thought otherwise, had gone unregulated and unchecked and let itself grow and grow until it consumed his being with denial, until his heart convinced his head that John would be there as long as he needed him, as long as he craved his presence. As long as Sherlock drew breath.

He was still breathing, and John wasn’t here beside him. There was something so fundamentally _wrong_ about that, so unnatural about the fact. It was like a fish swimming on dry land, or a head existing without a brain nestled snugly inside. John was meant to be here.

He was _supposed_ to be here. Is this what grief was like? This feeling of wrongness, this feeling that he has lost something and the ethereal denial that he might find it somewhere if he looked hard enough, as if John was just hiding from him, playing a game, and he might wake up tomorrow and have everything he wanted. Grief didn’t feel like loss, like losing anything. Not really. Not to him. Grief felt like being told he was wrong. It was like solving the world’s most complicated problem, then having the prize taken away because someone else stole his answer. He didn’t feel as if he’d lost John, just misplaced him. He was still here, somewhere, and alive, surely. Sherlock would feel it when he...well, if he wasn’t.

His last memory of John floats up, unsummoned. His white body, the loose feathers sleek and smooth as they touched the face of the rippling river, looking like a drowned Delaroche martyr as his pale skin sank beneath the murky black water. The night had been particularly bright, then. Sherlock remembers staring at the stars as his brother and Lestrade carried him out of the water. He'd never asked what had happened to the body, but Mycroft would know surely, there had to have been a recovery...could something that had never been there the same way carbon and air was there be truly recovered?

He startled out of his thoughts as Gladstone tugged at his leash.

They’d arrived. He’d been wondering where he should start. Not many people these days claimed to be experts on angels. Plenty of theologists, yes, but no one seemed to think a doctorate in divine messengers seemed worth the price of societal ridicule.

Gloved hand raised, he grasped the large heavy knocker and let it fall against the door.

There’s a commotion inside, loud enough for him to hear out on the street. Gladstone looks to him, head cocked, but Sherlock waves a hand, pacifying him. Odd that the occupants would be up at this hour, though, in a way, he’s not surprised. He’s kept stranger schedules.

The door opened and a tall, thin man stood before him, slightly hunched from pouring over tomes and staring into microscopes—much like Sherlock might have been had he a mind to forget the ramrod posture drilled into him at a young age. He wasn’t quite what one would call old, but not young either, dark hair slicked back with grey edging in at the temples. His eyes, wrinkled and kind at the edges, settled on Gladstone with a peering benevolence before they turned to Sherlock.

“You know,” He says by way of greeting, “that I wrote a thesis on the existence of Tenebests and other theological creatures in graduate school and the professor laughed at me. I really didn’t need the ridicule to know I failed the class, but it certainly didn’t help. I’d like to see his face right now.”

If Sherlock is surprised, he doesn’t show it. He draws on his most friendly smile, apologetic of the hour.

“Apologies, sir, I don’t have a clue what you mean...might I ask, is this the house of Doctor James Mortimer?”

“Well, I do live here most days out of the year, yes.”

“Would you mind if I came in?”

Dr. Mortimer steps aside with a wry grin, gesturing to the foyer with a wiry arm.

“Only if you bring the beast with you.”

* * *

Upon entering the foyer, Sherlock could immediately tell that Doctor James Mortimer lived alone, for his flat looked much like Sherlock’s before John had come. Loose paper, numerous earmarked books, beakers full of murky, forgotten liquids, and general clutter filled every surface.

“Would you like anything, Mr. Holmes? A drink or nightcap, perhaps? Or, if not, I believe I have some apples in the crisper, unless the maggots in the fridge have spread...”

_Intentional or thoughtlessness? Either way, he’s one of my kind._

“A drink would be lovely, thank you.” Sherlock answers with a polite smile.

Mortimer nods cheerfully and disappears down a dark, narrow hall, darting down a handful of steps into a sunken room where bright light pours out of the open doorway.

“Please, join me, Mr. Holmes!” His voice calls from the kitchen, and Sherlock heads to follow him, signalling for Gladstone to stay, though the beast is already curled up on a tattered rug that once must have cost a few thousand pounds.  “You must not believe I’m an absent-minded man, although it certainly appears as if that’s indeed what I am...”

The bang of cabinets echo through the dim, empty hall as Sherlock glances over the walls, the paint barely visible underneath carefully arranged photos and frames. From upstairs he could hear the strains of music with the faint scratch of a record player.

“Rachmaninoff?” Sherlock asks into the empty house.

“Indeed! Concerto no. 3 in D Minor.” Mortimer answers from the kitchen.

“‘Allegro ma non tanto.’” Sherlock mutters. ‘ _But not so cheerful’_. He used to favour this song in his brooding study hours at uni. Or simply just the brooding hours, which were many and constant. Raucous, frenzied piano humbled and tamed by a delicate, stringent flute and subsequent brass...beautiful. A chaotic variable among a harmonious, undisturbed element, not quite belonging, yet not quite separate. Once, in a more naive past, he’d identified as the piano piece—fast, sharp, as fleeting and bright as cracks of lightning—but then John had come, and Sherlock had pinned him as the flute—smooth, soft, light, a haunting, sad beauty—and then John had left, and the two parts had separated, the complimenting concomitant disappeared, and Sherlock had been left with discordant, arrhythmic, querulous piano. The flute solo was over now, quick as a flash and beautiful and done, yet the piano continued banging on, it’s delicacy replaced by a barbaric clanging.

He felt bare and alone, under attack by a song he’d once adored. It was something to consider, how so short a time has warped his view of the song, like a record left out in the sun to melt and bend, like paper left in the pockets of clothing and sent to the wash only to come back blank, with what was one dark with words and meaning rendered faded and barely readable. Was it the song he hated now, or who he associated with it?

Sherlock blinks as Mortimer’s voice calls out, moments after he’d last spoken.

“If I recall correctly,” Mortimer says, “the performer is Victor Merzhanov...quite lovely, very talented hands. More often than not, this tends to be my companion through the night, though occasionally I’ll call up Toscanini or Debussy if I feel particularly restless or wistful, in that order.”

The song ends and skitters over the bumps of the record player’s needle into the recognisable ‘Intermezzo: Addagio’, another brooding hour favourite. Sherlock turns away, thinking of a different kind of needle point and split open books and the misted windows of weekend mornings spent in his bed in his dorm room. He’d often shot up at the climax of classical songs. It had made him feel powerful.

He’s been in the hallway too long. Mortimer will wonder what he’s so preoccupied with.

He descends down the stairs and through the doorway into a long and narrow manicured kitchen. Cleaned and scrubbed diamond-shaped cream and cobalt tiles line the floor, making way for old wooden counters and cabinets, an ancient-looking oak table shoved against the far wall, and a bay window that reflected the looming black perforated lantern that hung from the ceiling.

“Your home is quite impressive, Dr. Mortimer.” Sherlock notes, and for once, he’s not truly lying. It reminds him a little of his own—though can he call it that without John?—cramped, but well-lived in and filled with uncommon, cluttered, eccentric things. Mortimer has a handful of brightly coloured but wilting flowers pinned to a spreading board on the table, folded carefully open as if they were a note Mortimer was searching for secrets.

“Oh, thank you Mr. Holmes,” Mortimer smiles kindly as he twists the cork from a bottle of wine. “But I’m no _Doctor_ just yet, simply a picker of little shells of knowledge on the shores of the great unknown ocean. My dissertations have yet to be accepted by the academic community…I don’t believe they’re quite ready to accept the things I tell them, if the laughter is any indication.”

“And what is it that you tell them?” Sherlock asks, eyes ponderously passing over the titles on Mortimer’s shelves. Even in the kitchen the man has a large bookshelf, cornered between the table and the wall.

“Oh, various things that they don’t want to hear.” Mortimer replies as he hands Sherlock a glass, the words so casually uttered that it suggested he’d been accustomed to failure and rejection for years. “‘Angels are real, there are creatures we’d never dreamed existed somewhere in a realm parallel to ours’...a realm, I’d like to add, that is perfectly possible to bridge with ours, if the world had more open minds and less adherence to doctrine—”

“ _Say that again_.”

It’s the man’s tone that makes almost-Doctor James Mortimer turn around, wine bottle nearly suspended over his glass. It’s quiet and heavy with something dark and hopeful. Holmes is turned away from him, a white knuckled grip fastened around one of the shelves of the bookcase.

“Angels are real, there are creatures never dreamt of—?”

“No,” The man turns around, his eyes wild as he licks a drop of wine from his lips. “No, you id—the next bit. There’s a realm? A realm with angels?”

Mortimer taps a finger thoughtfully against his glass. “Well, if you’d like to call them that...”

“What would you call them? Angels? Nephilim? Zamzama?”

The almost-doctor frowns in contemplation. “The middle choice, perhaps. Though, before we go on, I must ask you Mr. Holmes...why are you here? It’s nearly 3 in the morning, you brought a Tenebest with you—a creature, I might add, that existed only in my dreams until a half hour ago—and you ask questions about the Nephilim and the bridge between realms? Who are you?”

“My name is Sherlock Holmes; yes, that’s my real name. I’m a consulting detective based on Baker Street, I’m the first and only holder of that occupation, and recently I’ve had a Watcher—Nephilim in your terms, I suppose—as my flatmate, who has been the first and only holder of _that_ occupation, and he’s sacrificed his life for mine and I want to know why.”

“You...want to see him again?”

Sherlock frowns. “I said no such thing.”

“You asked about the bridge. You want to see him again.”

“Yes.” Sherlock answers softly. “Yes, I want to see him again.”

The mist condenses on the window panes facing the quiet backyard, and water gathers on Sherlock’s glass as it lies forgotten on the bookshelf.

James Mortimer begins to ask his questions, and Sherlock begins to tell his story.

* * *

“Incredible.” Mortimer murmurs as he collapses back against his seat like a puppet with its strings cut.

They are sitting in his den, Gladstone still curled on the old rug, keeping a wary eye on Mortimer, who sits on an old loveseat with a tattered woollen throw over the back. Sherlock paces before a fireplace, bricked with dark stone and covered in soot, a second glass of wine in his hands. Appearance's sake, and all that.

“Incredible.” The man repeats. “You had a Watcher, a Nephilim, right under your roof, fighting battles for you, slaying the wicked, making _crepes_ —incredible.”

Sherlock wants to point out the obvious, _John never slayed anyone_ , but if he allows the man his fantasies, he’ll be more compliant.

“And you have a _skull_? A real skull, right there on your mantle?”

Sherlock nods stiffly. “His name is Thackeray.”

Mortimer chuckles as he sips his wine. “I hope I never see the inside of your flat, Mr Holmes, otherwise you might find yourself destitute and I’d have a new hobby of thievery. You’re a very interesting man, you know. A singular consulting detective with a Tenebest at your feet and a Nephilim of your own watching over you.”

Sherlock bit back his response— _I don’t want to be singular—_ and downed the last of his drink, letting the dregs of thought settle in his mind as the wine pooled warmly in the pockets of his stomach. _Wait..._

He turns away from Mortimer, facing the fireplace.

“Watching over me?” He frowns. “John is dead, he drowned—”

“Dead? I can assure you, Mr Holmes, that angels, even Nephilim, do not die. Not in their realm, and certainly not in ours.”

_But I saw his body. He was whole, and he sank like a stone._

“Their existence can’t be destroyed in any means?”

“Their corporal form, perhaps, but not their essence. Angels and Nephilim do not exist in bodies in their realm, they exist in what I describe as projections of consciousness.”

_“I'm just…bigger, I guess. Brighter. Stronger.”_

“So, if John died here, no matter how he was killed, he still exists somewhere else?”

In the space of time it takes for Mortimer to consider his question, Sherlock holds his breath.

In that moment, he doesn’t care if he will never see John again, if Mortimer says the words he wants him to. In that moment, he swears that time has ceased, that every conceivable event outside this room he sits in has paused, that the world has stopped turning and waits with bated breath, resting all of its hopes on the tweed-clad shoulders of a middle-aged, benevolent man, comfortable in his convictions at the price of academic rejection.

In that moment, Sherlock Holmes felt the glorious, trembling labour pains of a love long-gestated being born into the world. A love conceived in smiles and laughter and pure understanding, in bright flashes of feathered wings and rain-slick streets and the pulsing, living adventure of a creature so human that the earthly world, unable to equate his existence, had banished him to somewhere Sherlock couldn’t find him, leaving him alone with this gravid weight of affection to bear until he could shoulder it no more and, in a rush of brightness and drunken realization, brought it forth screaming into this world, raw and pink and tender.

In that moment, Sherlock Holmes realized, with utter certainty, that he had loved and was in love with John, wholly and absolutely, for he had the shattering thought that if he never saw John again, if he never spoke to him, if he died thinking of a fleeting memory and never had a happy day for the rest of his life, he would be alright if it meant that John existed still, somewhere. If that existence didn’t include the mortal realm, fine, if only it was an _existence_. Sherlock would survive, he would thrive from the knowledge that John was still John, in a somewhere he’d never touch or see.

In the span of a moment, Sherlock Holmes knew what it was to be destroyed by love, engulfed so fully in that helpless expanse of open water, in the loneliness of the feeling, and he managed to spot the shore in the distance.

“Yes,” Mortimer answers, “I believe he still exists somewhere else. You say that you suspect his demise was foul play?”

_Warm tea slow thoughts Quinn Holmes soft carpet imposter_

“Yes.” Sherlock forces from a stiff jaw. “A demon sent on someone else’s orders. A mercenary.”

“If indeed it was a demonic force behind John’s attack, and if it was Azazel who, I might add, is one of the most powerful demons of his realm, then my best interpretation is that he wanted John gone from this particular realm and so he banished him back to his own in order to do so. John was, to put it bluntly, in his way.”

“I’d thought as much.” Sherlock murmurs.

“Mr Holmes,” Mortimer begins with trepidation, “You are a smart man. You’ve got intelligence radiating from your pores. Why did you come to me? Surely all of this had occurred to you.”

Sherlock smirks. “I needed a doctor’s opinion. _Your_ opinion.”

“Mine? Whatever for? I know I’m not the only theologist in London, and certainly _not_ at the forefront, nor am I the most credible. Hell, all of my dissertations have been scorned or laughed at!”

“Because, James Mortimer, I know what you are.”

“And what is that, may I ask?”

“I made it a point in my line of work to be attentive to detail, so allow me to share with you what I’ve found. To begin with, your flat is far too nice for a graduate student, even one of your age and skill, to afford, especially in this part of London, so you must have come by it through an inheritance or you have another line of work. I’d already deduced that you and I were of the same breed: we have various experiments lying about, we work best alone—I believe you referred to me as singular? a phrase which struck me as rather odd until I remembered that individuals, upon meeting someone new, will often project aspects of themselves onto the other in conversation in order to test the waters so to speak and see how well that projection is received—and we also share a taste for Vincent-Girardin montrachet wine, which often runs around 250 quid a bottle, and I do so appreciate your generosity in pouring me a glass, really you could have offered me a chardonnay worth £5 from the corner shop and I’d never know the difference, but you do have a habit of leaving both your bottle’s label showing and a guest unattended with a phone that has working Internet. As to the monetary element, you allowed me enough time to get a good look at the photos in your hallway, or lack thereof as you only have framed certificates, odd for a man of your age to have no pictures of sentimental value, isn’t it? But upon closer inspection—and, as a constructive criticism, you really must open your wine faster and keep your guests within eyesight more frequently—I realised that many of the certificates were out of date, at least in context with your age. Were you really a graduate of the class of 1923 at Cambridge? Obviously the presence of the framed items are to give the appearance of normality, yet aren’t supposed to be scrutinised so closely, so there’s no sentimental value to you, and the lack of personal pictures rules out inheritance. Surely, if Aunt Helen loved you so much to give you a house and enough to pay for rent and expensive wine, you’d have a picture somewhere. I must infer, then, that either you have no close relations or that you look astoundingly good for a man who is about to become a centenarian.

So, let’s tally up what we have so far, yes? You’re an eternal graduate student who mentioned it in the past tense when we introduced ourselves, you no obvious means of inheritance yet you live a flat that must be valued in the triple digits and you can afford expensive wine since you treat complete strangers with it so you must have an outside source of income, you’re a solitary man without any close friends or family, you’re obviously intelligent, and you have an expertise in theology and mythical lore.”

“What have you concluded then, Mr Holmes?”

“The simple but damning fact that you are a demon hunter.”

Mortimer smiles ruefully. “What gave it away?”

Sherlock’s eyes narrow.

“I never told you Azazel was the demon who attacked John, just as I never told you that I had a skull on my mantle. And for someone with such a clandestine career, you were very eager to welcome me in. You even knew my name. Odd, as I never told you that either until after you'd invited me in. It seems that we have much to discuss, James Mortimer.”

"Indeed we do, Mr Holmes." Mortimer smiles. "Indeed we do."


	17. deep dark water

“Mind telling me who you’ve got holed away upstairs?”

“What led you to come to that conclusion?” Mortimer asks with a quizzical smile.

“There was a great deal of noise when I arrived, before you came to the door.”

Mortimer downs the rest of his wine in one swallow and licks his lips. “Ah, that. I’m sorry to tell you that was the result of a massive cave in.” Sherlock followed his gesturing arm to a bookshelf pushed against the wall; a shelf had collapsed, sending a shower of books to pile upon themselves. “No survivors, I’m afraid.”

Sherlock returns his smile. Analysis: blunder. Pawn: active.

“That was already present upon my arrival.”

Mortimer stares at him for a moment and before the grin comes Sherlock is quite sure he came close to being kicked out of the house.

“Nothing gets past you, does it, Mr Holmes?”

“Please, call me Sherlock, Mr Mortimer.” Sherlock says, smiling up at him as he takes his glass.

“Please, Sherlock,” Mortimer responds with a return of bared teeth. “Call me James.”  
Sherlock waits a moment before striking, allowing the man to turn the sink on and off. He keeps track of every movement the man makes; he is, after all, not one to ignore his own advice.

“What’s upstairs, James?” He asks casually.

“Are you a God-fearing man, Sherlock?” Mortimer calls from the kitchen.

“Not particularly, but I can be if it means getting an answer from you.”  
James reappears, wiping his hands on a towel. “No, that’s not necessary. I just feel like I have to warn you.”

Antipositional. Backwards pawn.

“Warn me about what, precisely?”

“I won’t deny that you are right when you say I have something upstairs. I just don’t want to scare you.”  
Sherlock raises an eyebrow and glances pointedly down at Gladstone, still dozing on the rug.

“Fair point.” Mortimer shrugs, tossing the handtowel over his shoulder before he heads into his darkened foyer. “Are you coming?” He calls from the darkness.

Sherlock stays in his seat, examining his nails. He regrets not taking the clippers with him. “Why are the lights still off?”

J’adoube.

A pause.

“This...thing I have upstairs.” Mortimer answers, padding back into the light. “It thrives on darkness. I try to keep it happy.”  
Sherlock stares into nothingness for a moment, his mind whirring. He stands, shadow cast large and looming on the wall.

“Enough games, James. Enough vagaries and shaded words. I don’t want to keep pretending I have the patience. Tell me what’s up there.”  
Sherlock doesn’t miss Mortimer’s quick glance upwards.

“Listen...you’re going to laugh...”

Sherlock gazes unblinkingly, waiting for an answer.

“Christ...” Mortimer rubs at the back of his head. “Alright, listen. I, uh...have you heard of shapeshifters?”

Sherlock blinks, brow furrowing in confusion.

“They...exist?”

“Yeah.” Mortimer huffs with an airy laugh. “I mean, I should know. I’m shagging one.”

Sherlock doesn’t laugh. Some part of him wants to, at the absurdity of it. A shapeshifter? Honestly?

There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.

Sherlock finds himself unable to fill the space of silence with the proper verbose necessary for this conversation. Should he offer congratulations? Condolences?

“I’d hope for your sake you practice the use of prophylactics.” He deadpans.

Mortimer laughs. “Would you like to meet her?”

* * *

We told you what would happen. You were warned.

The water’s cold beneath the warm surface. Bone piercing cold right into my heart cold pain pain skin being pulled exposing my tendons ice washing against my bones cold.

Water trickles through my feathers, breaching the patterns cold ice cold never want to be cold again I’m screaming there’s no sound and I am becoming nothing the pain is breaking me down dirt stirred up into water carried back and forth into the current spread my bones through the water just let this end this pain I can’t live through this someone kill me something kill me  _kill me kill me_  take me back I don’t care just don’t let me live like this please please I can’t do it I’m not strong enough  _please_

I can't move anything. There’s a hole in me I am no longer complete I am incomplete I am broken in pieces washing away crumbling to nothing and part of everything and it hurts how can saving something hurt so much this burning in me fire eating me up there's ice on my skin and hell in my heart it's changing me changing my form I can feel it I feel myself changing I'm going back I can't no please I can't do this I can't leave him

If I had lungs they'd be in flames, burning for air. I'd be dead by now, as I sink to the bottom like a stone. I might stay here forever and no one would know. No one ever looks for things they've lost in deep dark water.

I might stay here forever, and he'd never know. Never realize he was so close. I want to touch him. I want to see his face. This can't be the end God this  _hurts_  I can't live like this this can't be the end please I need to see him I never got to say goodbye.

I'm settling on the bottom in the soft silt like a forgotten relic of a sunken ship. I might rust down here. I might stay here forever, and he'd never know.

I can't see the light anymore. The stars are far away. The water smells of salt and sweat and greenness. I might stay here forever, staring up at the stars, here in the cold.

I might stay here forever, at the bottom of the river. In the belly of the snake.

* * *

Steam rises up against cream tiles, filling the room with hot, heavy dampness. James Mortimer sits on the lidded toilet seat, sleeves rolled up, as Sherlock stands in the doorway, staring at two different coloured eyes as they gaze back at him.

"You're lucky I added bubble soap." The shapeshifter says without taking her eyes from Sherlock's. He hasn't even looked anywhere else; didn't even want to.

"I'm not interested." Sherlock replies. "I'm married to my work."

The woman grins and shifts, resting her chin on crossed arms on the lid of the tub. "Oh, I'm sure it won't mind a little on the side."

"Hey now," Mortimer warns, "His work wouldn't be the only one who minds."

"And what is it that you do, Mr Holmes?"

Sherlock glances to Mortimer, who shrugs.

"She was curious and I like pillow talk."

"I'm a consulting-"

"Consulting detective, yes, the first and only, but what do you do?"

"I observe and deduce."

"And this is the work you've wed yourself to?"

Sherlock smiles sardonically. "Something like that. I've recently taken up another line, however."

"Mmm, and what might that be?"

"Demon hunting."

"And you'd like James to teach you? He caught me, you know..."

"And it was no easy feat, I'd like to add." Mortimer interjects.

"Flattery will get you everywhere, love." The shapeshifter winks at him.

"Well, I just took him up here to meet you." James says, standing. "We'll let you get on with your bath."

"Oh no, that's alright darling, I'm quite finished."

With a cascade of water, the shapeshifter stands, her pale skin shining under the overhead light. Every inch of her is smooth and porcelain, gleaming like shined marble, curving softly in all the right places. Sherlock can appreciate aesthetics if anything, and she's pleasing to every eye.

"Showoff." Mortimer mutters, handing her a towel.

"No need." She smiles, turning her eyes defiantly to Sherlock. "Not for this one."

Mortimer lets the towel hang as she approaches Sherlock, steam billowing off her and brushing his face. He can feel it beneath his clothes, sticking to his skin.

"Hello, Sherlock Holmes."

"A pleasure..."

"Irene." She smiles. "My name is Irene."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is so short! I just wanted to give you guys something to chew on during my plane ride.


	18. bearers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I mentioned last chapter, I took a plane ride. This plane ride took me to London, which was stunning and insane and wonderful. I went to 221b and had a wonderful time geeking out, but I also went to Kensington Gardens, right to the place I'd looked at in pictures to recreate the setting where John falls into the Serpentine. I took a picture of my own, and that's what you see in this chapter.
> 
> Other photos I took can be found here (http://imgur.com/a/lGgQs). Sorry for the repeats!
> 
> Happy readings!

The night’s bruised cheeks were fading into a rosy blush as the sun rounded the pocket of Earth that London had nestled itself into centuries ago. An ancient grandfather clock ticked in a cluttered sitting room through the silent hush the morning holds before the seal is broken and people wake from their muddied dreams of things, of fleeting happiness, of night terrors and ghosts that are blinked away with consciousness.

The clock ticks. Sherlock stares, fingers steepled to his lips. The pendulum swings. Irene stares back at him, wrapped in Mortimer’s robe, her head resting on raised knees. The sizzling of cooking food crackles like static from the kitchen as Mortimer fixes breakfast.

“Stop trying to make sense of this.” She says quietly. “It won’t work.”

“Where are you from?” He replies, undeterred.

“Nowhere you’ve heard of.”

“Sheol?”

She throws back her head and laughs.

“That pit? Was my first impression so terrible?”

Sherlock’s eyes narrow.

_John came from ‘that pit’ and he was the best thing that ever happened to me._

Sensing she had said the wrong thing, Irene softens. “No. I’m not from Sheol. I’m from your realm, more or less.”

Sherlock arches an eyebrow and she elucidates.

“In another age, when your race was younger, they came up with stories. Stories about witches and magic and mythical creatures never heard of to terrify and enthral their children. Let’s just say these stories had to come from somewhere, there had to be some truth in them. There were tales of gods turning themselves into animals from the people you call Romans, just as the Germans devoured stories of women with tails for legs and siren’s songs as hungrily as the Finnish and Dutch did. And you English, you so love wolves and bears and vicious and bloody things, don’t you? These stories are not all…inherently false. People do love fairytales. They love things that are darker than they are. Makes them feel better.”

“Are you a dark thing, Irene?”

Something, some shadow, crosses her face, though the light in the room hasn’t changed. He blinks, and then he's staring at himself. He keeps his mask on, and looks into his own eyes, though they stare back at him with a wolfish expression he's never seen in the mirror.

“It depends on who you ask, Sherlock Holmes.” Irene says, speaking with his voice and hers, smiling her smile with his lips. She does that with alarming frequency, the smiling. He’s starting to become annoyed by it. It’s her answer to everything.

Mortimer appears in the doorway, an apron featuring a woman’s torso in a bikini tied around him, unfazed that there are now two Sherlocks in the room.

“Breakfast is ready.”

* * *

Having politely refused a majority of the food save for a piece of toast and a cup of tea, Sherlock eyes Irene carefully. Something about her seems unnatural, and though that reason is obvious enough, there is something…closed about her. Something guarded. He’ll know eventually, given enough time and tricks. Her lover was easy enough; quite the open book, even without any prying.

Mortimer says something amusing to her and she smiles coyly, without the predator’s gleam that Sherlock was privy to. James is far too relaxed for a demon hunter to be around a certified supernatural creature, but there is still information Sherlock has not uncovered. Questions still unanswered.

“How did you two—” He begins, but falls silent. The couple looks to him, then to each other.

“I was in Iceland at the time.” Mortimer begins, pushing his glasses to rest on his head. “In this little town called Vík. Lovely place, highly recommend a visit to the basalt cliffs. This one,” here he indicates Irene with his fork, “was causing some trouble. Shocking, I know. There were reports of townspeople, men and women alike, that disappeared for a night and, upon reappearing, appeared—how did they describe it?”

“Ravished.” Irene answered with a shameless grin.

“Yes, that’s what it was! Anyways, this wasn’t so much of a problem—nowadays people get  _ravished_  day and night, seems like—until the married ones started disappearing. You can imagine what kind of chaos that brought, especially when the mayor’s wife turned up missing half her clothes, and then the next night he did too. Everybody had the same excuse, but no one seemed to make any sense of it: the gist of it was that the person they most desired appeared to them and seduced them into bed, but disappeared the next morning, usually having taken some trinket or jewellery or something valuable. So I get assigned to this town and its dirty little secret, and it’d be obvious to the newest hunter what I’m up against, even if it wasn’t to the town itself. People don’t usually believe in impossible things if it doesn’t benefit them, do they?”

“Not usually, no.” Sherlock answers, feeding his scraps to Gladstone, who’s rested his great head at his feet, body taking up half the dining space. He knows this far too well.  _Humans don't often go out of their way to see realities they don't believe in._

“Anyways, making a long story short—”

_Too late._

“—I find Irene in the middle of undressing a bartender—who’d I’d been flirting with earlier, I’d might add—and stopped her before she did any more damage. All in all, it was one of the most unique first dates I’d ever been on, as she’d taken my form to do the damn thing.”

Sherlock’s eyebrow arches on its own accord.

“So I’ve got a loaded gun pointed at her—plain old bullets do kill other things like they kill us—and she tries to seduce me, but still appearing as myself. It was like my cock and my brain were on two  _very_  different wavelengths. I’d never seen myself sashay like that before. Never knew I had it in me.”

“Did you—”

“Oh, give me some credit, she was still the thing I was hunting and I still had a job to do.”

“He does like to do it now, though.” Irene says with a wicked grin. “Nothing turns a man on quite like himself. He loves it when I take his form and suck—”

“Irene, please, he’s just eaten.” Mortimer interjects on Sherlock’s behalf, though not without reddening. He shoots an apologetic glance at Sherlock. “No boundaries uncrossed for this one.”

“He didn’t catch me then, though.” Irene adds. “I’d say I left him a bit thunderstruck, and perhaps more than a little sexually confused. He never knew what was coming.”

“If by that you mean the wine bottle you smashed over my head,” James replies, “then no, I didn’t. She escaped, as she does, and I chased after her, as I do. Eventually, I found her in Prague, at the opera with a member of the Habsburg family. What was her name?”

“Oh, I do forget now…doesn’t matter, really. I got what I wanted.”

Sherlock says nothing, but notes it.  _And what will happen to Mortimer when you get what you what out of him?_  He had yet to discover just what it was that the hunter offered her. Protection, most likely, and a bed to sleep in, food to eat, a roof too...but she is smart. She wants something else.

“I always had a weak spot for the opera, and classical music.” Irene says, breaking Sherlock from his reflection. “James plays it for me sometimes. That Rachmaninoff earlier was a treat. He knows what I like.” She shoots a lascivious wink at him. Mortimer doesn’t notice.

 _She thinks she can seduce me. How quaint._  Sherlock decides to let her believe she’s cleverer than he is. That she’s winning. The scene in the bathroom flashes before him and he hesitates. She knew he wasn’t interested. Must be persistence then, or otherwise. He’d return to it later.

“Tell me, Sherlock,” Mortimer says as he takes his plate to the sink. “What exactly do you think I can teach you?”

Sherlock is quiet for a moment, letting Gladstone lick jam off his hanging fingers. “You’re an expert on angels, are you not?”

“Some say that, yes. Not my professors, but some people. Colleagues.”

“I want to find two of them. I want you to teach me how I might do that.”

Mortimer pauses pensively, wiping his hands on a tea towel.

“Are they in one realm?”

“I believe so.”

“And one of them is John, correct? Who is the other?”

“Nachash.”

He can feel Irene freeze behind him, only for a moment, before she disguises it by moving around him to the sink.

“Nachash.” Mortimer repeats, blinking as he readjusts his glasses. “The original sin. You want to find evil incarnate?”

“Yes. If you’ll help me.”

“It won’t be hard to find him, that’s for sure. What do you want with him anyways?”

Sherlock smiles, and he can feel the coldness inside it.

“I owe him a fall.”

* * *

[ ](http://imgur.com/SOBtdKP)

Sherlock walks home, hands stuffed in the pockets of his coat, as a leashed Gladstone trots happily beside him, snapping at the fat, too-trusting pigeons as they stroll through Hyde Park. The morning’s brought cloudy grey skies and a cool wind, dew collecting on the untouched grass. A handful of joggers have run by, but Gladstone knows not to bite at them.

The fountains tinkle in the distance. He hadn’t noticed them before, when he’d made his mad dash here, through the night and silence. His mind had been elsewhere. Funny how that happened. The man whose job it was to notice things hadn’t seen the defining feature of London’s most famous garden. What else had he missed?

Birds swim happily in the quartet of ponds that led to the head of the Serpentine. Chirping quails were nesting on their eggs, the ducks floating aimlessly, watching a lone heron quietly stalk the barren water for food. They make no move to flee as Sherlock approaches, though they do turn away from Gladstone, who eyes them with the glazed and hungry look of a child in a candy shop, a thin stream of slobber hanging from his jowls, once hallowed and gaunt and now paunchy and full. Sherlock suspects that John coddled him too much, thought him too much of a pet and not the predatory beast he’d been when he arrived. Didn’t matter now that Sherlock had found himself feeding him table scraps and petting the wolf far more often in one day than he ever had when John was here. He was trying to pad the void with little things. He was trying to make it hurt less. He couldn’t say how well it was working.

He passes the birds, ignoring them as he had with everything else. He can see the water now, the one that mattered more than anything else. That black hole that had swallowed one and everything. Soon the garden would be full of locals and tourists alike. Did they know, as they were enjoying the birds and the flowers and the ponds, did they know that they stood on the lip of Tartarus? Did they know that this water would swallow everything they loved, everything they cared about?

He approaches the marbled steps, the features of the ram heads that graced the ornate stone vases on the balustrade washed out from a century and a half of English weather, leaving them faceless and blank but for the holes were their eyes once were. The old fountain looms before him, black, slick and shining in the morning with green muddled slime that drips from the rusted edges with the saturated consistency of slobber. The two stone women on either side pour the same gruel from the tipped vases in their hands, adding their contribution to the thick, dark slime with unshaking arms. Beneath the fountain bent figures hold it up, bearing their carriage reverently despite being coated in the slime of the ages, oily with filth that no one has bothered to wipe from their faces.

It’s the most honest thing Sherlock’s seen since John’s fall. The ungilded perseverance through the muck. Once they’d been clean, shining and new, and they are not so now, but still they stand, unclean and unapologetic. Perhaps he was putting too much meaning on a forgotten monument. Perhaps there was a reason he’d never seen it until now.

He looks up, past the dirtied fountain, towards the water. It’s shining in the light, hammered smooth and crenellated with dimples from the veiled sun. Past the bright surface he can see the water, murky, the darkness thickening and coagulating despite the time of day.

Water molecules aren’t created anymore. They all leapt into existence on the planet in one go. Every single drop of water on this roiling, green rock has been recycled through everything that drinks it. The dew that graces the grass once touched the lips of kings and their queens, whores, orphans, murderers, lions, Tenebests, passed from Jesus to Shakespeare, roses to clouds, and then to John and then him. If he cupped a handful of that water, he’d be holding the ages in his hands, all the sweat and tears and piss of the famous and the unknown alike. If he cupped that water, it might hold a single molecule of John inside. He could hold John in his hands, if he wanted.

He’s broken from his thoughts as Gladstone pisses near his feet, the stream steaming in the air as it splashes on the balustrade and into the water. John’s molecules mingle with rose sweat and king’s tears and now Gladstone’s piss. The cycle continues, undeterred.

The peace of the park undulates with the cool wind. He stares at that spot out in the water. He’s memorised it, traced it by sight and a wrinkled, frantic memory amid splashing water, outlined it like a body at a crime scene, only it can’t quite be marked with chalk like the others. He wishes it could. He must remember this, since no one else will. He will be the relic, the plaque that stands in this place. He will be the monument, dedicated to a life few witnessed and more owed their lives to. Moran—Azazel—he would have killed more. Nachash would have told him to kill more. One might be gone, but one was still left...

“It’s regrettable that more people don’t enjoy the park in the morning, don’t you think?”

Sherlock doesn’t turn at the voice. He doesn’t need or feel the proclivity to. This water must be the only thing that sees his face.

“I called on you at your home. You deigned to answer. Upon further investigation, I can see why. Where were you tonight?”

“Not where you think I was.”

“Oh, no, you misunderstand me. I know exactly where you were.”

“Then I wasn’t doing what you think I was.”

“Evidence, Sherlock. For peace of mind, I must ask for proof.”

Rolling his eyes as he stifles a frustrated sigh, he pulls his wallet from his coat and plucks a card from it before turning around and handing it to Mycroft.

“A…theologist? You visited a theologist at three in the morning. Forgive my scepticism, brother mine, but this seems a bit farfetched, even for you.”

“A theologist, and a demon hunter.”

“A demon hunter.”

“Yes, a demon hunter, must we continue this farcical conversation as you repeat everything I say or will you treat me like the adult I am and leave me in peace?”

“The last time I left you in peace you, the adult that you are, overdosed and left me to find you the next morning, half-dead and near comatose. If you do not wish for me to, as you see it, condescend to you, then you must prove that you can be trusted.”

“Why, if you won’t believe me?” Sherlock rounds on his brother, brow pinched with anger. “James Mortimer is a demon hunter. Call on him if you don’t believe me, I’m sure his shapeshifting girlfriend will answer the door for him.”

Mycroft’s silence only further aggravates him.

“You didn’t believe in John at first; you thought I was lying then too, until he showed you what he was. You ask me for proof now, when again you don’t believe me. Go see Mortimer if you doubt me so much. I don’t crave your acceptance or your approval. Go to him for your own reassurance but I’ve given you all that I can, so just leave me alone already. Your  _peace of mind_  can go hang itself with mine.”

“Sherlock, I know you are hurting from John’s death—”

“ _He is not dead_ , Mycroft. He can’t die.”

Mycroft’s lips purse. “Be that as it may, it is obvious that you are sorely feeling his absence, and you misdirect your anger towards me. I only wish to help you, but given your past emotional outlets you’ll understand if I concern myself with your wellbeing more than most might.”

Sherlock mutters so quietly that Mycroft scarcely believes he heard him correctly.

“You’re the only one that concerned themselves with my wellbeing. John did too. And now he's...he’s not here. You are all that’s left.”

“You have myself, Sherlock, that is true, but you also have Gregory and Miss Hooper and Mrs Hudson. Do not allow your grief to limit your perception. John was not, and will not be, the only one that cared for you. In his own way, perhaps he was singular, but in other ways, he was excluded. No one will love you as a brother as I do. You’d do well to remember that.”

Mycroft turns to leave. His umbrella tapping against the stone.

“The card.” Sherlock says. “I want Mortimer’s card back.”

Mycroft looks at it in his hand.

“Will you call on him?”

He looks to his brother, turns over the card once, twice, in his palm.

“No.” He answers finally, handing it back to Sherlock. “I believe you, Sherlock.”

He nods his departure to him and stars to walk away.

“Mycroft.” Sherlock calls into the cool morning air. “I will see him again.”

“Yes, Sherlock.” Mycroft answers, his face turning back over his shoulder, yet he doesn’t meet his brother’s eye. “I trust you will find a way, as ever, to get what you want. You’ve always been persistent, and too clever for your own good.”

“I’ll do it. I’ll get him back.”

“Yes, brother mine. You’ll do what you want.”

Sherlock watches him go, a shadow in the dawn’s light, and wonders if he should be worried with Mycroft’s words. If he should look closer.

He watches his brother go, and he finds himself wanting him to come back, to insert his staunch opinions into his life, to loom over him and try to control his life. To protect him, so Sherlock doesn’t have to care about himself as much as being alone will force him to.

He’s alone in the park now, with the fresh morning air and tinkling fountains and Gladstone’s heavy panting. Alone with the water, and the ghosts inside.


	19. waterproof

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was more of an experiment in style, and mostly helped along by a bottle of wine, some beer, and The National's new album. Just be forewarned, it's more wibbly wobbly than the rest of the story.
> 
> "Graceless  
> Is there a powder to erase this?  
> Is it dissolvable and tasteless?  
> You can't imagine how I hate this  
> Graceless
> 
> I'm trying, but I'm graceless  
> Don't have the sunny side to face this  
> I am invisible and weightless  
> You can't imagine how I hate this  
> Graceless
> 
> I'm trying, but I've gone  
> Through the glass again  
> Just come and find me  
> God loves everybody, don't remind me  
> I took the medicine when I went missing  
> Just let me hear your voice, just let me listen"
> 
> Graceless - The National

He’s being followed, naturally. Whoever it is isn’t very good at it either; he’s known they were there for three and a half blocks. Sometimes when he cuts corners into sidestreets or shortcuts he can see them from the corner of his eye, following after him.

This is a game. Not well played, yes, but a game nonetheless.

His mind, unoccupied when presented with such a tedious task, wanders.

He had a dream last night, which was normal, but he remembered it, which was odd. He never remembered his dreams, or maybe he didn’t care enough to. But this one. This one had been interesting. Most people might have said it was a premonition, but Sherlock never put much stock into that pseudo-analysis mysticism. Maybe he should now, considering his life had turned into some kind of supernatural menagerie in a handful of weeks; angels, werewolves ( _No Sherlock,_  John told him exactly seven times,  _not werewolves, I’ve told you a hundred times)_ , shapeshifters, demons, and then the demon hunters ( _Mortimer is human, but vaguely so_ ). Mortimer warned him when they began,  _the farther down that road you go, the more of yourself you lose_.

But yes, the dream. He was in the foyer of his mind palace, just stepped over the threshold from being  _there_  and being  _here_. He’d designed it beautifully, of course, as no one would see it but him, so he had only himself to please. He walked down oaken parquet floors, smooth and shining immaculately under his bare feet, each step lighting the way ahead of him, until the narrow hall widened into the Enlightenment Room.

If only he could write a love letter to parquet floors. The way they shift under his feet, the way he can step in one little puddle of design and skip stones to the next one. Wondrous, truly.

A thing of beauty, the Enlightenment Room is. He loves it far too much; it might be a point of concern that he’ll spend hours in  _here_  and not out  _there_. He’s been coming too much lately, since John left. He’s found too much solace in the place. It was his slippery steel fire escape, jutting invitingly out from the warmth of his domesticated life into the night of unknowing, into the cold darkness of an escapist existence. If it got too hot in his flat, he could just…step outside, into somewhere else, somewhere cooler.

He stepped into Enlightenment just as he slipped into sleep, though he didn’t realise it until he woke up in a sweat. The room is immaculate, dark wood shelves that filled the spaces from high vaulted ceiling to the gilded balconies, to the floor, crammed with items of interest and information. His trophies. His treasure pile, his and his alone, like a great black beast upon a mountain of stolen gold, pickpocketed from the unsuspecting and snatched like a hungry thief from the stalls of mundane and ordinary lives. His cold little museum, where everything had its place.

He stood barefoot in his realm of stolen things, and he shut his eyes.

How do you begin to describe a luxury so lush and dark that you feel as if the air on your skin is powdered gold and silken ivory?

The room is certainly to Sherlock’s tastes, from the singular sofa—an exact replica of the one in his flat—in the middle of an empty room that’s filling with chaos at the corners, to the enormous walls of dark panelled shelves, cased in glass from prying eyes that will never see them, that house all of the facts and tricks he needs. Lockpicking shines like a well-loved trophy next to the ash wood box of analysed alphabetical samples of London mud from Westminster to Whitechapel to Whitehall. Pinned boards of poisonous flora, from belladonna and opium to oleander are tacked up, with neat little cards depicting their uses and toxicity are propped up across the room from charts demonstrating how to make nitroglycerin from kitchen items.

He strolled through the room, an observer in a museum of his own creation, marvelling at the preserved artefacts. Then he came to the end.

Well, there’s no real  _end_ , see, since he’ll never stop learning, but there’s a limit to his knowledge, loathe as he is to admit it. Spaces and spaces of shelf to fill with things like classic literature and politician’s biographies and tedious models of the solar system.

The last shelf, started but unfinished as of late, is for John. Of course it is. He fears it will remain unfinished. Somewhere, crouched out in his cold escape, he can feel it. A fear that creeps up like an influenza, slowly and with a building heat. He might just be waiting for the day for the fever to come upon him, and he can crash through the roof of Enlightenment and bury himself so far down into the floor that he’ll never get back up. Maybe he can add another shelf for John. He’d like that, nothing and no one had ever been allowed more than one shelf before, in Enlightenment; if the shelf space was full, he’d simply built it upwards, reaching towards the ceiling. This was why the glass house of poisonous plants stretched its arms far higher than the meagre, squat case of 72 neatly placed tobacco samples.

But John. He could build upwards as far as he’d like, and he’d never be done. It will remain unfinished, even though he certainly won’t and John certainly might not.

He reached the last case, and he stared at it, the way he used to when John wasn’t looking ( _but yes he was_ ), the way he looked at corpses, when he was trying to map their cold blue bodies for how they died; when he was looking for an explanation, a reason for what he saw before him.

John’s wings were mounted before him like a stag’s head, like a prize of some beast he’d hunted–and he supposed, in some way, yes, he had hunted John, and he’d killed him— and he was tracing the feathers through the glass when the shelves began to burst apart.

Brown mottled speckles  _crash_  look at those constellations of dots, like freckles  _crash_  could he bring them to an astronomer, could they find the stars there in those wings  _smash_  can you taxidermy the memory of someone you love, preserve it in chemicals so you feel that way forever, so you remember their face as it was, before it rots away, before it swells with water  _shatter shatter combustion explode_.

One by one, his cabinets, his mounds of gold moulded into other forms, imploded, the glass panes bursting outwards wholly, untouched, while the shelves shrank into themselves, rooting downwards into the floor to spring into green shoots and thin sprouts and tall trees. He walked in a daze through them, the panes shooting past him like rushing comets, like rays of light. Nothing touched him. His broken bare feet didn’t step on broken bare glass.

Cocaine never felt like this. Dissolvable powders and those tasteless things, they never felt like this, so empty and full, so busy with nothing. Wherever he stepped, the glass sheets rose beside him, around him, boxing him in so he might see the outside world as it passed before him. His little treasures were making a little prison.  Each step he made underfoot made the sound  _graceless_  on crunching glass.  _Graceless_  step  _graceless_  crunch look at you  _graceless_ your palace is falling, it’s going to ruin.

The roots of his shelves shattered the panes and wrapped around his wrists, around his stomach and chest and neck, pulling him upwards and apart. His heart begins to tear from the strain. He can feel it. Gone through the glass again, shattered completely, of course he feels it.

_"You're an angel, John. You're supposed to love me. You're supposed to love everyone."_

Don’t remind me, don’t make me think of it, don’t make me think of him, I can’t, I can’t—

How nice it would be, in this moment, to disappear. That’s what he wanted, after all. To not be  _here_. To be somewhere else, somewhere far away. His cold fire escape wasn’t enough anymore, this empty rooms and shattered shelves wouldn’t do. He’d have to be better. He’d have to go missing.

 _“I'll always stay because I know how good you are, Sherlock Holmes_ ” and then  _“you are still the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen”_  and  _oh God_  he’d just thrown it all away, hadn’t he? He’d let himself be fooled by a demon cleverer than he was, let himself be caught off-guard and now John would never be back, never be in his life to say such lovely fragile things again, and it was all his fault, all his fault—

As the roots of the shelves pull at him, he feels his heart rip.

As he woke, alone in that grey dawn, chest slick with cold sweat, a thought lingered in his startled mind.

I want to know what dying means, if it brings me to you.

Yes, this dream had been interesting. He’d have lingered on it longer, if he’d had the precocity of self-analysis, but that trait, along with patience and modest self-reflection, was one Sherlock Holmes lacked.

Stop that. There’s time later. Someone is following him, and doing it poorly. He’d found out why, but all in good time.

He rounds a corner, into an alley barely wide enough for him, skinny as he is and as he’s become. John’s not around anymore to make him toast with the edges browned like he didn’t know he likes it, or crepes that stick to the ceiling.

This someone follows him. He knows. He can feel it.

“I know you know I’m here, Mr. Holmes.”

 _Irene. Damn_.

He’d been hoping for something…well, something else. He didn’t know why. She smiled too often and too easily. He didn’t trust her.

He stops at the mouth of the alley and turns, smiling a grin of his own. The Yes-Hello-Wonderful-To See-You-Again-Isn’t-This-A-Nice-Game-We’ve-Been-Playing-Lovely-Weather-Too smile he whips out to seem polite.

“Irene. What brings you here?”

“A girl can only go so far in heels.” She answers with an arched eyebrow. She’s herself today, or whichever form the one that rose from the bathtub is, dressed in a tight dawn blue dress with a cream overcoat gilded with gold lining and sporting large, dark sunglasses and thigh high black boots.

“Quite.” He answers, and he knows she noticed his glance over her. He’s planned for her interest. “I don’t make it a habit of repeating myself.”

Irene sighs. “Can’t we just catch up like old friends do?”

“To do that, we must be old friends first.”

“Always a first time for everything, you know.” She says, looping her arm around his.

“Two days constitutes neither a close nor endearing friendship.”

“You’ve never spent two days with me, love. Let’s go to dinner, get to know each other a little better.”

He takes his arm away from her, but made sure to let his hesitation linger long enough to cultivate her attention.

“I’m not hungry.”

“Well, I am.”

“You are dressed the part.” He responds dryly.

“You can be so charming, you know, when you want to be.”

Sherlock stops as they exit to the street and stares solemnly down at her.

“You don’t know me.”

Irene stares back just as stoically.

“Yes, I do.”

“You assume to, nothing more.” He turns to leave. This woman has a special talent for both intriguing and annoying him.

“Maybe if we had dinner, I could get to know you better.”

“I told you, I’m not hungry.”

“I thought you made it a habit not to repeat yourself.”

“Then allow me to make myself clear,” Sherlock snarls with sudden vehemence as he rounds on her. “You are a commodity, nothing more. I only tolerate your presence because you have latched onto James like a tick, and I need his help, so I must accommodate space for you. This does not mean I want you around, nor do I crave your attempts at what you perceive to be high-class sophistry. To me, you are a body in a room sucking in air, and nothing more. Kindly, leave me alone. Go eat dinner with James.”

He stuffs his balled up fists into his pockets and turns away from her, hunched in his frustration. Leave me alone, just grant me that kindness.

“Another time, then?” Irene calls, and he scowls, though she can’t see it.

He doesn’t look back.

* * *

He sits in John’s armchair and stares into nothing. Gladstone rests by his feet, content and well-fed (Sherlock has no problem feeding others, it’s himself he forgets about), his great head resting on Sherlock’s bare feet.

He never had a problem with loneliness before.

He lets his head rest against the back of the chair, tilted towards the ceiling. He hadn’t taken much, maybe one or two pills, and just enough to make his head float in choppy water.

The ceiling is moving, like oil added to water, slowly, and in segmented waves. Water from John’s wings, sliding off the feathers. He smiles, feeling the muscles lazily drift upwards, curling at the corners of his lips. Look at him, what he’s reduced himself to, like boiling water left forgotten until there was nothing but a burning pot. Gladstone licks at his hanging fingers. He doesn’t care enough to draw them away. Isn’t it wonderful, blissful oblivion? The way his eyes sag with such a lovely weightless blasé. He doesn’t care, and isn’t it wonderful?

It’s raining again. You know, as it does. It hasn’t rained since John left, but he can’t bring himself to connect the wires between  _rain_  and  _John is back_. Something, some nerve inside his chest, is whispering to its twin in his brain that John is not coming back, yet some other enemy plots against it and tells him to be patient, to learn from this James Mortimer, to hold out hope against the raging waves that crash on him every night, when he lies awake and knows he is alone in his flat, and he knows that there are spaces that should be filled that aren’t anymore.

His heart is humming. He rubs at his chest,  _just stop it already_ , but he knows the ache runs deeper, somewhere he can’t touch. It’s psychological, he knows that, he does, but he’s been told often and frequently that such a little organ can hold such a great depth of feeling. Is that what this is?

He lets his head loll to the side, revelling in the abdication of responsibility, in the loss of higher consciousness. He stares into the night, as wet and dark as it ever was, and he wants to hear John fumble around behind him with those ridiculous wings for tea or milk or a book or whatever he’d been looking for.

Silence. That’s all there is these days.

He must have drifted off, not into sleep but into something less than what he feels, for when he startles back into sluggish consciousness, it’s to the screaming frequency that rattles his windows, accompanying a bolt of lightning outside that strikes the street below him.

Dazed, he rises to his feet and stumbles to the window. Through the haze, he’s remembered that lightning doesn’t make that sound. Only one thing makes that sound.

 _John_.  _JOHNjohn john john Iknewit I KNEW IT you’re back you came back to me just like you promised_ —

He wraps his dressing gown tightly around him and barrels out of the room, flying down the stairs so fast he nearly falls down them. He throws the front door open, revelling in the rain that flies at him because  _John is back_  and he steps into the cold, wet night to help his only friend, the only person that really mattered.

A blonde figure is crouched in the street, wings furled around them. He heads closer, but…these wings are lined with black; no brown to be seen. They’re smaller, and longer in wingspan as well, streamlined for flight, not protection. Is John able to change his wings?

The figure stands and turns to him.

“You must be Sherlock Holmes.” A womanly face smiles at him, straight teeth, blonde hair, freckles  _not John_. “My name is Harry. John sent me.”

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock's Enlightenment Room of his Mind Palace is inspired by the eponymous wing of the British Museum I visited last month, pictured above. Keep this room in mind, it becomes important later! I believe the picture even contains something vitally important, so do keep an eye out.


	20. afterimage

Sherlock stares. Can do nothing but. Words words words his mind spins in circles, screeching like tyres on dry pavement, skidding around his skull and banging off the walls. Disappointment is thick on his tongue, bitter like the thin membrane of taste beer leaves behind. An angel is here, and it is not John. There is something wrong with the world that allows this. Something has broken the world to allow this to happen and it must not be spinning no it must not be right it is wrong it is  _wrong_ —he spins now, unsteady on his feet, and the cold water splashing at his ankles ripples and reminds him just how high he is at the moment and Harry is still waiting, watching, just like John, same eyes even oh  _god_

_Say something—_

“Do all of you enter a room like that? Must I ask the block to invest in earmuffs?”

Harry laughs and with a pang he remembers John’s is the same.

“A bit unavoidable, falling out of the sky and all,” she replies, smiling, before she realises what she’s said.

In the silence, his shirt begins to stick to his chest, cold with the slick pervading paste of the rain.

“Is it?” Sherlock asks quietly.

“Yes,” Harry answers, “for all of us, yes.”

“You said he sent you.”

“He did.”

“You—have you talked to him? Is he al—you’ve seen him?”

Harry stares at him then, and her pity makes him want to shut the door and forget that this night has happened.

“I don’t know.” She looks up at the dripping sky then back at him. “Not to be intrusive, and the water’s a nice change from the pit, but can we go inside? I’m freezing my tits off out here.”

* * *

“Is London always like this?” Harry asks, face pressed against the windows as she looks out.

Sherlock is perched upon the shaking memory of the same question, asked days, lifetimes earlier, to answer at first. His mind sways too much.

“Dark and dreary?” He echoes. “Unfortunately.”

Someone said that once, he thinks.

Someone less alone, someone stronger, he thinks.

Harry looks at him.

“He told me a lot about you.” She says with a smile, as if that makes him feel better, as if it will make him hurt any less.

“How?”

“Our kind, we don’t…how do I put this…we don’t talk. We have no words, no sentences, no conversation. We have feelings…instincts—” Here, she grapples for a word.

“Sentiment.” He offers.

“Yeah,” she grins. “Sentiment.”

John never told him they didn’t have words (John hadn’t told him a lot of things; he was learning that with great frequency now that he wasn’t here to defend himself). John had seemed to have done so well with words, he hadn’t questioned it—and when did he start referring to him in the past tense, that was wrong of him, not right, he’s still somewhere, just not here and that’s probably the worst of it…

They’ve been sitting in silence and Harry doesn’t break it. Some part of him is thankful. Some part of him still feels broken. This ache in the pit of his stomach, this coldness that shoots up his arms, this thing that keeps him up at night and wondering, this  _what if_  of it all. It will drive him mad one day, or maybe it already has. To know he had this wonderful, special thing, and now he’s lost it, it was his fault, he can’t be angry with anything because it was  _his fault_. He wants he wants he wants—he doesn’t know what he wants. He wants this hole to be filled or closed or at least not so raw round the edges. He wants to not hurt anymore. He wants to remember, he wants to not, wants to not

“Tell me about him.” He hears himself say.

“He loved you.”

 _Obvious_.

“Something else.”

“He likes to watch you when you read. Can’t say if he still enjoys it once he saw your…choice of reading material.” She adds, nudging aside a guide on the vivisection of sparrows.

“How can he see me?”

“When you look at the sun, and then you look away and shut your eyes, what do you see?”

“The afterimage.”

Harry gestures, as if that answers it. “Humanity is bright, Sherlock. It’s hard to look the sun in the face when it stares back at you. So we get our fill when we can, and then we look away and keep what we saw as long as we can.”

“You did not answer my question sufficiently.”

“How, you mean?” Harry shrugs. “Mystical fucking hocus pocus, I don’t know. That’s like asking why you have a mouth and make the noises you call words with it. We just know what is and what isn’t.”

“What is he? Now,” he adds, swallowing harshly, “what is he now?”

“Something…different.” She frowns. “I can’t feel him, exactly; it’s muddled, like staring through fogged glass. He’s still  _there_ , I just don’t—can’t tell what he’s there as. There’s something in the way.”

_Now we’re getting somewhere._

“Do you know what would cause that?”

“Well,” Harry swallows, “Lots of things, really. He could be in between states—that’s the most likely—but if he was, it wouldn’t have been for this long. He would’ve come back to you, Sherlock. I know that, if nothing else. He’d come back to you if he could, however he could. Whatever’s stopping him, it isn’t because he’s lost faith in you.”

“What else?” Sherlock asks, interest bubbling inside him for the first time in eons. “What else could stop him?”

“There’s the transcorporal shift, the lack of space to fill a body, um, he could be in stasis, there could be an obice—”

“Obice? A prison?”

“No, it’s more like a—like a—oh fuck you lot and your words, they’re no good when you need them…” She rubs her head, as if to draw the word out. “A placenta!” She bursts out.

“A…placenta.”

“Yes-well, no, dammit—it’s all-encompassing, and elastic, like a membrane…like skin almost, but thinner, with lots of resistance. Like the feeling of a strand of hair, lots of give.”

“A barrier?”

“ _Barrier_!” She shouts.

“ _Quiet_ —”

“A barrier,  _thank you_ , that’s what I wanted—”

“Yes, wonderful, now would you please  _shut. Up._ ”

Harry closes her mouth, looking around.

“Why?” She whispers.

“You’ve not been here long,” he hisses, “but normal humans don’t shout loud enough to rattle the walls. London’s not experienced an earthquake in recent memory; let’s not change that.”

“Right,” she murmurs, “sorry. But you were right about barrier.”

“For god’s sake you can talk in a normal voice, just don’t  _shout_ —”

“John didn’t tell me you had so many  _rules_ —Christ, can you do  _anything_  here? I’m gonna blink a few times soon, do I have the go ahead?”

“You. Were. Saying.” Sherlock bites.

Harry rolls her eyes and for a moment he feels a keen pang at the familiarity; she looks so much like him. “An obice is a sort of barrier, like a shield almost. It’s a physical object that prevents the entry or re-entry to the world of whomever the caster names.”

“The caster, what are they? What do they do?”

“They  _cast_.” Harry answers as if he was an idiot, and he’s always wondered what that feeling is like, being condescended to. “And they’re human, sometimes. Sometimes something else, like sprites or demons”

“This obice, does it have an adverse? Something opposite, something that could send you to a realm?”

“Yeah, that’s how John got here—”

“Information,” Sherlock says exasperated, “I could have used in the beginning…”

“What, he didn’t tell you that?”

“Vaguely, in bits and pieces.”

“Ugh, what a _showboater_ , I could’ve told you all that…he thought he was  _so_  mysterious with his bloody fucking feathers and his cheekbones…”

“Well you weren’t here, were you?” Sherlock snarls, the instinct to defend John rather than question him too overpowering.

“It’s called an ostium.” Harry says, ignoring the barb. “Like a door. If it’s open, you can go through.” She catches his narrowed expression. “Sounds easy, right? Fucking barrel of laughs it is not. You’ve got to be there at the exact right time, and be in the exact right mindset, breathe the exactly fucking right way—it’s a miracle I’m even here, never mind four of us.”

“Four?”

“Yeah. Me, John, Azazel, and…” She trails off, a sour look coming to her face.

“Nachash.”

“Yeah, that asshole.”

_One way of putting it._

“Can an angel be the caster?”

Harry scoffs. “Those pricks? Unlikely. They’re too high and mighty.  _Nachash_  on the other hand, is constantly reaching new lows, so my money is on him.”

“Why?”

Harry shrugs. “‘Cos he’s a dick?”

“Has anyone ever told you how eloquent you are?”

“No, but they said I had a way with words.”

He stares at her in blank silence.

Something in Harry shifts away, some veneer washes off, and she looks away, out into the rain-painted window.

“Did John…did he tell you what it was like, back, you know, where we’re from?”

“He mentioned it.”

She smiles ruefully. “There’s no way—you can’t know.” She shakes her head as if to throw off the memory, and looks at him. “It’s something your world won’t understand, even if you wanted to know. You can’t comprehend what it’s like, and how heavy the burden is once you’re out from under it. Here, it’s so…so  _much_. I haven’t even been here long, and John, he was here for  _weeks_ , that’s—I can’t believe he lasted…”

Sherlock closes his eyes. John might be back there, in the pit. He might be  _gone_ , and for no other reason than that he had been there to brighten Sherlock’s life and then leave him so he’d know what darkness felt like. He was supposed to illuminate, and then burned out the bulb entirely.

“He said it was a place where you forgot the lightness of being,” he remembers, “where happiness evaporated like water. A place without shade, full of suffering.”

“He had a way with words as well. He’s right, though. He’s exactly right. You know no other existence than the one you burn in. I didn’t know—I never realised I couldn’t hurt. It wasn’t a possibility.” She pauses, licking her lips. “If you knew how it was, you’d know how happy he was here, with you. It was enough to be in this world, but for him to be in yours—you can’t fathom how much he wanted it. We’d all be in the darkness, burning, and he had a different heat in him. I could feel it. You gave him something none of us had ever had before.”

Sherlock cannot imagine anything that was so special about him as a child, nor teenager, nor adult, to give John even an ounce of what he himself felt for him. John was an angel, he was good and brave and unparalleled, and what was he? What did John see in him that was so deserving?

“He saw a lonely boy, and a lonelier man.” Harry says quietly, and he’s jarred by the remembrance of John’s kind’s talent for empathy. “He saw himself in you.”

“Why did Nachash take him away?”

“He’s always been proud of being the only one to leave Sheol. I think he doesn’t want to share the title. Plus he’s a fucking vile, twisted knobhead, so there’s that too. It’s just the way he’s made, like an animal that doesn’t know any better. I think he wanted John to get out, to come here to you and have this thing he wanted for so long, and take it away, just to prove that he could.”

“How can I kill him?”

“Kill him?” Harry’s eyebrows shot up. “He’s like us; you can’t  _kill_  him in your sense. You could banish him, trap him in Sheol or some other place, but you can’t erase his existence. Doesn’t work like that. Hey,” she adds quietly at what she sees on Sherlock’s face, “that means that the same goes for John. Much as he can try, Nachash can’t erase him.”

“But he can banish him. He  _did_  banish him.”

“Nachash didn’t, Azazel did. There’s a difference.”

Here, Sherlock perks up. There, a spark at the deep end of his brain, down in the dark water.

“What is it?”

“Azazel is a lesser demon. He’s weaker than Nachash is. His magic or voodoo or whatever you call it here, it’s not as powerful, but it’s the same level as John’s.”

“John could break it, then?”

Harry purses her lips. “Maybe. He’d need help.”

“Yes, well it was my intent to just sit here and do nothing, so that’s out.”

“Ha fucking ha. Look, it’s simple if you think of it like birth—”

“I’d rather not.”

“—but the baby’s all turned around the wrong way. We’ve got to get the forceps out and right it so it can be born out into the world.”

“Your use of mediocre figurative examples are poor, but noted. These  _forceps_ ,” Here, he drags the word and fights his distaste, “they are the ostium.”

“Right. Usually they’re an object close to the caster, something important, something they always have on them…do you remember anything Azazel had?” She asks as she rolls her neck, her gaze wandering around the room.

“I was…indisposed at the time.” Sherlock admits begrudgingly.

“Ah, well, it doesn’t matter, can’t do anything for us now.” Harry shrugs, and then begins rifling through his shelves.

“What are you doing?” Sherlock snarls, grabbing at the books Harry seems intent on shoving onto the floor.

“Checking…” She mutters, moving on to the mantle.

“For what, exactly?”

“If there was a fire—” She grabs the skull, examines it, and tosses it to the floor.

Sherlock lurches forward, just managing to catch it before it hits the ground, the echo of the shattering that hadn’t occurred blooming in the passing seconds. He lets the frenzied fear dissipate before he straightens, fury lined in his face.

“Exactly how  _stupid_  are you—”

“—what would you save?”

He blinks. Harry reaches out a hand to take the skull from him.

“Easy,” she rolls her eyes, “I won’t break it. Promise.”

If he holds any more tightly to it, the skull will fracture. He lets her take it.

“If this whole flat burned to the ground right now, what is the first thing you would take?”

He answers before he can think about it. “Mrs Hudson.”

“Well, that’s lovely, but assuming she’s a living human, we can’t use her.”

“Use her for what?”

“Your ostium. Duh.”

“My—”

“Yes, your ostium, come on, Holmes, get with it! John said you were smart, Christ.” Harry huffs as she breezes past him.

“You—we’re going to summon him? Bring him back?”

“We’re gonna do our damndest. That’s why I’m here, genius.” Harry says, hopping onto the kitchen counter as she rifles through the cabinets. “I think he knew this might happen, so he called me here, probably to watch your great sullen arse…”

Sherlock ignores the jibe, caught in the staggering whirlwind of someone knowing more than him about something so important. “How does this work? What do we need?”

“Well, the skull’s a start—oh  _Jesus_ , what is—is this a rat?” She asks, holding a jar of murky liquid.

“It was a rat. I preserved it when I was ten.”

“Ugh, what he saw in you, I’ll never—ha!” She retreats, pulling out a half-full stoppered decanter of scotch.

“Why do we need scotch?”

“ _We_  don’t need it for an ostium. I, however, have never tried it.” She says, taking a swig, her grimace at the taste settling into a satisfied smile. “Oh, well, that’s just lovely.”

“If you’re quite finished—”

“We are, mostly…but I don’t know if you’ll like what comes next.”

She turns and looks at Sherlock, into his hard gaze as he stares back at her, a man with madness in his face.

“Anything. I’ll do anything.”

* * *

James Mortimer opens his front door to a detective, his slobbering hellhound, and a winged angel.

It is a testament to his idea of normal that he looks at each of them, sips his coffee, and asks: “So, what do you need me for?”

“We’re breaking into the British Museum.” Sherlock answers.

Mortimer nods.

“Let me get my coat.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy (late) Halloween everyone! I'm off to a party, where I'll be *rips moustache off* Gene Parmesan, how you doing?
> 
> If anybody cares, I have a new Sherlock story out called "Trouble Will Find Me", so please check it out and let me know what you think!


	21. acroterion

The cab speeds off down the street as soon as they pay their fare, tyres screeching as it merges with the empty night that engulfs it.

"Oi, what's his deal?" Harry calls out, voice bouncing against the silent buildings.

"Perhaps," Sherlock says snidely, hands shoved in his pockets, "it was the fact that he just had a foul-mouthed angel, a gigantic hellhound, and an insomniac demon hunter all in one cab."

" _Or_ ," Mortimer adds, sweeping past him to examine the lock on the gates, "he could've been spooked by the scowling skeleton-like detective, which, when you think about it, is probably the weirdest thing of all of this."

"Elucidate."

"You look like the Archangel of Death, Sherlock. The rest of us look relatively normal compared to you and your great bloody coat and cheekbones. Considering that cabbie didn't know you were the closest thing to normal in the backseat, I bet what he was really afraid of was _you_." He looks up and catches Sherlock's eye before shrugging apologetically. "I don't really know how to put this delicately."

"By all means," Sherlock hisses. "Try."

"You _look_ scary. Monster, terrifying, grrr, all that. Even Gladstone looks like a teddy bear next to you. The rest of us are scary because of what we are. _You_ are scary because of what you seem to be."

Sherlock moves to turn away and catches his reflection in the guard house. Pale, nigh-translucent skin, eyes smudged with darkness of exhaustion, constant scowl. Check, check, check. Everything looks normal.

So what makes him so terrifying?

"It's the air around you." Harry says from behind him. "Not an aura really, more like…a sense about you. The way you hold yourself, the way you want people to see you, it makes you blind to what you really are, or how you look. You scare people, Sherlock. You're intimidating. Doesn't mean you're a monster."

He stares at her for a moment. She sounds like John…

"It's not hard, you know. All of our kind has that perception, not just John. Plus it's written all over your face, genius. For someone so awfully proud of seeming infallible, you're awfully shite at hiding when you're feeling weak."

She pats him on the shoulder and moves behind Mortimer.

"Watch out, layman's time—"

"— _amateur hour_ —" Sherlock corrects.

"—it's my turn."

Harry stares at the gate. That is, simply, all she does. She stares. Doesn't blink. Doesn't move. Stares. A vein bulges at her temple, and her cheeks grow red. Gladstone tilts his head and Sherlock lays his hand between the beast's ears. He's gotten so big—almost up to his chest now, and that's only when he's sitting. John would be proud of these things he's saved, side by side in his aftermath.

" _Ha_!" Harry breathes, straightening out of her paralysis and gesturing at the gate.

Nothing happens.

"Huh." Harry scratches her head. "I really thought that would work. Guess I can't do that."

"Really?" Sherlock scoffs. "What gave it away?"

"Oh, _oh_ , right, stupid—" Harry bangs her palms against her head before wrapping a hand around the wrought iron. It melts away in her palm as if it had never been there in the first place. She turns to them and grins. "Had to touch it. Obviously."

"Yes." Sherlock arches an eyebrow. "Obviously."

They all file through the gap and as Sherlock looks back to signal for Gladstone, he blinks and the gap is gone.

"How did you do that?"

"Hmm?" Harry looks back. "Oh, well you lot do love to believe in the idea of physical things, and not so much in the things themselves, don't you?" She shrugs. "It's not hard, changing what's there once you know what to call it. It either is, or it isn't, and it was in our way, so I made it into an 'isn't'."

"Yes, but how exactly—"

"Honestly, Sherlock, we don't really have time for questions." Mortimer says, turning his torch on as they cross the lawn. "Bookmark it, yeah? I'm sure Harry'd love to go into specifics later, when we're not out committing felonies."

Sherlock begrudgingly sets it aside as they trudge up the steps towards the great looming doors of the British Museum, padlocked and chained.

Harry has it wide open by the time they get there, 75 steps later.

"Alarm system's shite," She's saying as they pass her, "And where are the guards anyways? Aren't there people for this?"

"Asleep, most like." Mortimer answers, banging his torch to get a steady beam, focusing it on Sherlock. "Or maybe Vlad here scared them off."

Gladstone sniffs at the cold floor then straightens suddenly, quirking his head before bounding off into a door to their left.

"What the fuck is that?" Harry asks as they turn to follow Gladstone into a long room full of warm muted light.

Sherlock and Mortimer look to each other, each willing the other to explain to the angel what exactly a Christmas tree was.

"Ugh," Harry leans close to examine a golden bauble. "Is this the face I got? Bugger." She looks around the room, at the hanging tinsel and wreaths, then down to the dimly lit glass cabinets. "So is this like a shrine or…?"

"Yeah, for overpriced shite." Mortimer mutters as Gladstone lurks around each of the shelves.

"It's the Christmas season." Sherlock offers.

"Why do you celebrate it with dead trees and shiny things?"

"I don't know."

"No one knows, really." Mortimer says, and then adds cheerfully "Happy Holidays!"

* * *

The room is built to impress, evident upon crossing the threshold. It looms endlessly in the darkness, watery moonlight trickling from above down onto the wooden parquet floors, their shine liquefying the surface into a smooth, still blackness. Books line the upper floors, hidden behind gilded rails, with large cabinets rooted in the floor beneath them, displaying various objects of ruin and grandeur.

Harry ignores it all, heading right to a piece ahead of them, a small stone bowl supported by two lion's heads on either side that morph in the middle grotesquely into a solid body of wings and a single leg.

"The Trentham Laver," Mortimer reads, shining his light on the placard, "'The bowl is of dubious antiquity…the oval table is not genuine; the supporting heads are partly ancient having originally served as acroteria on the lid of a sarcophagus'…okay, moving on…'the rectangular plinth slab has ornament carved in the early 3rd century AD but it has been altered to adapt it to its present use…'" He looks at Harry. "So we came for a giant punch bowl?"

Harry rolls her eyes, which strikes Sherlock as an incredibly _human_ thing to do.

"It's not _just_ a punch bowl. Did you not catch the part about _dubious antiquity_? That's the best bit."

"So it's…a magic punchbowl?"

"I am _this_ close to sending you back home. I'll do it too. One little snap and poof, you're back with your thoughts and that weird sex witch for company—"

"Hey, alright, a: my thoughts are perfectly good company, thank you, and b: she's not a _witch_ —"

"Semantics aside," Sherlock interrupts, shooting a glare at either of them, "we can argue about our life choices back home, where we aren't breaking and entering."

"Yeah," Harry nods, but holds her fingers near Mortimer's face, as if in a threat.

Sherlock ignores her, and approaches the plinth the laver sits on, slowly circling it from all sides.

"Why is the dubious antiquity important?" He asks, eyeing the gaping jaws of the lion's head. "Does the age of the object influence the power of the ostium?"

Across the room, Mortimer perks up from where he's bent double over a display case and Gladstone trots happily to his side. Sherlock stares at the laver, but Harry has no compunctions with the museum's policy of look-don't-touch, and she leans against it as if that's what it was there for.

"Well no, not exactl—oh _hell_ ," She says, scrambling to catch the toppling object. Tentatively, she sets it back upright and grins up at them. "Well that was fucking close, right?"

Her words echo in his head _close close too close_ and when Sherlock can finally feel the blood coming back to his brain, his face contorts in anger.

"If you don't mind," he hisses, "please don't destroy our only chance of getting John back until after he's here!"

Harry looks at him for a long moment.

"You're still upset. I thought so. Alright," she claps her hands together, the sound echoing in the din, "close your eyes."

"I'm not up—"

"You couldn't fool John and you can't fool me. Now shut your gob and close your eyes."

"Fine."

"Think of a monster." She says softly.

He frowns.

_Horns, scales, red eyes, forked tongue, sharp teeth, bespoke suits, bright light in the sky and a sound like screaming—_

"What makes it a monster?" She asks.

– _he took John he took him from me and it follows that he is evil because John is good—_

"Are you a monster, Sherlock Holmes?"

"No."

No, of course he isn't, he isn't like that, he's not—

"Are you a monster, Sherlock Holmes?"

" _No_ —"

He's _not_ , how can he be, he's only a man, he's not—

"Are you a monster—?"

" _I don't know_!" He snarls, opening his eyes and turning to her. "I don't know." He repeats quietly. "Nachash took him from me, and I did nothing. I allowed it to happen. I—emotions are no safeguard against impermanence or death. Someone you care about can be taken from you, with no regard to your input." Gladstone nudges at his hand and Sherlock rests it on his head. "Love is only a motivator for grief, nothing more."

"Nachash cannot love, Sherlock. I'm sure you realised that. Do not turn yourself into him. You and all your intellect, you and your scoffs at the hand-holders and lovers of the world, you and your great heart, you are _better_ than him. You're better than resigning yourself to his fate because it hurts less. Let yourself hurt, Sherlock. Do what you're here for. Be human. Be greater, because that's what you are.

"Nachash envies that. He despises that he can only feel hate, that he doesn't even have the memory of loving anything but constant forces telling him it was so. He hates that he once loved and now has nothing but bile in his bones. He took John from you because John was what he could never be. He wants you to suffer as he does, and you cannot allow that. You _can't_. He wants you to be like him. He wants you to close yourself off like this, and he took John because that was the easiest way to get to you.

"You didn't _allow_ anything to happen. Nachash surprised you; it's not like you stepped aside and let him in. Don't let him do this to you. John wouldn't want to come back to a man he doesn't know. Let yourself hurt, and be better than him because you can. So you tell me who's the better man: you, or the demon who wants to play at being human?"

Sherlock doesn't answer, and she falls silent, eyes prodding at his mask, looking for a weak spot, for acknowledgment, for something. He doesn't know what to give her, or what he can spare to offer.

"Not that this isn't touching—" Mortimer says from behind them. "And trust me, it's a nice gesture and all, and I know I'm ruining a golden moment, but did I just fucking hear you say you're using an _ostium_?"

"You did." Harry answers, eyes still searching Sherlock's face.

"Okay," Mortimer nods. "Okay. You're crazy. You're absolutely _insane_. This is it. We've reached the peak of craziness on Mount You're Bloody Fucking Bonkers."

Sherlock looks away from Harry and frowns. "Why are you so apprehensive?"

"Why—why am I—?" Mortimer turns to Harry. "Oh my god, you didn't tell him, did you?"

"Tell me what?"

"I was going to get around to it…"

" _Tell me what_?" Sherlock asks more insistently.

"To activate an ostium," Mortimer sighs, pinching his nose, "You need three things, three very, _very_ important things. You need a receptacle—"

"Got it," Harry says, tapping on the laver.

"—you need an anchor—"

"Boom." Harry digs into her satchel and pulls out the skull that previously graced Sherlock's mantle.

"—and you need a host."

" _Yeah_ …about that…"

Mortimer stills, his spine stiffening.

"Is that why you asked me?" He bristles, advancing on Harry. "You're going to sell out my body to god knows what and leave me to—"

Across the hall, the glittering Christmas tree flickers, and a spark of light rolls towards them through the lights above before they are left once more with moonlight. Harry's eyes seem to suck in the traces of light.

"Do _not_ say that to me again." She says, her voice thick with an unnameable weight. "Don't even think I'm capable of that kind of cruelty. If I was, why would I be on your side?"

Mortimer deflates, his defences lowering, and has the good grace to look ashamed. "Right. Sorry. I just—I thought that—"

"I know what you thought." Harry says coolly.

"Who is the host then?"

"The anchor." Harry answers, handing him the skull.

"No, the host—" Mortimer corrects, rolling the skull in his hands, and then stops. "Oh." He looks back down. "You think it will work?"

"No." She says cheerfully. "But we can try."

* * *

He stands with his back to them, staring at stone. Twin snakes intertwine into handles few would ever use to lift the great stone vase they support. Four blank eyes stare out at him, and he stares back. There is an odd feeling coursing through his body, pooling in places one never notices until it makes itself known. The curve of his ankles, the base of his spine, in each knuckle, behind his ears, gathering in his sternum, roiling through his temples. It's a faintly ringing klaxon, like he's stuck his whole body in an electrical socket and with each moment that passes it is if he has only just pulled away, his muscles stiff with the anticipation of defence.

"Sherlock?" Harry calls behind him as she approaches, as if she doesn't want to startle him. Please. What could he possibly be _startled_ by? "We're ready."

It's as if she hasn't spoken. He keeps staring at the snakes. What else has he been waiting for, if not this moment? What else has he allowed himself to hope for, if not what might happen in the next few minutes? He should be running over there, he should be demanding for the idiots to work faster, he should…he should _want_ this more. He should be feeling so urgently anxious that insults would be flying around the room at this point a million miles an hour.

But here he stands, staring at the snakes. And here he stands, doing nothing, unable to bring himself to move.

"Sherlock, I know you're nervous—"

He scoffs quietly, and wills this quiet alarm to stop tearing his insides apart.

"—But we can't do this without you. Come on. It's time. Sherlock? Hey, look at me."

She moves to stand in front of him, but he can't look anywhere but at the snakes. He isn't shaking. Why would he do that? Absurd. What could he possibly be startled by?

" _Hey_ , _genius_." Small hands grab his chin and force his head away. Some deep internal voice tells him to look away, to stop staring, and he slowly follows it to Harry's hard, serious face. "We're all nervous as hell, yeah? You're not the only one who wants John back, and you're not the only one who's worried about how this will end. John is my brother, he's been with me for _centuries_. Your relationship is obviously, you know, _different_ , but don't think that this is all on you. It's on all of us. Got it?"

He swallows roughly and nods.

"Good." She smiles. "Now let's go get my fucking brother back."

She takes his hand and leads him back down the gaping hall to where Gladstone slobbers onto the floor and Mortimer fusses over the skull, nestled in the bowl of the laver next to a section of scaffolding pipe and a single feather.

"All right?" Mortimer asks, brow furrowed, and they nod silently. "Okay. Here we go."

He steps back, and the lights above them flicker on, one after the other, in a rolling wave before it crests on the other side of the room, leaving them once more with only the moonlight in the windows.

Slowly, light begins to build in the laver, shining through in pockets and slashes, illuminating the roughly carved characters. Harry's grip on his hand tightens.

The floor begins to shake, slowly but surely, as if the earth has turned to roiling ocean beneath them. Gladstone pins his ears flat back to his skull, but makes no move to retreat behind Sherlock's safety. A thick, black, inky substance begins to fill the bowl, submerging the skull as the pipe floats to the top yet the feather impossibly remains below.

As soon as it reaches the rim, just to the point of spilling over, it vanishes, leaving no trace. Patterns begin to bloom on the skull, taking the shape of the characters scratched onto the laver, before blossoming outwards, filling in with colour. The yellowed, dirtied bone begins to bleach, turning an aching white, before webs connect over it, knitting together in a dull grey that quickly shifts to a dark pink. As the colour deepens, spreading like a bloodstain over the skull's surface, the eye sockets film over, and old chipped teeth begin to clatter to the bottom of the bowl, pushed out by a newer pearl gleam.

The light from the sides of the laver pushes outwards, escaping the pillar it was confined in, and spills onto the floor. It's blinding—like a star entering supernova, yet hasn't quite reached its zenith but still expanding outwards with a trapped, shimmering heat primed to burst.

Without warning, the peak is reached and the light escapes its bonds, filling the room. Sherlock is blinded, robbed of all senses but for Harry holding his hand. He has the odd lightheaded sensation of being almost drunk, wobbling on his legs with a comforting warmth pooling in his stomach, spiralling outwards through his body towards his fingertips. That feeling that pervaded his body, that bright, sharp jolt, is wiped away as if it had never been.

As the light fades and his sight returns, the skull is no longer in the bowl. Nothing is in the bowl. The feather is gone, as is the pipe, held in the sinewed palm of a fresh new hand. And the skull, the skull is nowhere to be seen. Instead, instead there is only one thing lying before them.

There, a raw, scrubbed pink covers an old body—but new in so many ways—that lies on the floor. There, unconscious, but _there_ nonetheless, is—

"John."

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Holidays and a fantastic New Year to everyone! Apologies for the chapter gap, as I was studying abroad and had absolutely no time for anything outside of the library, but I'm back now!


	22. The Hound

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John returns...in a decidedly Not-John Way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Forget the dead, the past? O yet
> 
> There are ghosts that may take revenge for it,
> 
> Memories that make the heart a tomb,
> 
> Regrets which glide through the spirit’s gloom,
> 
> And with ghastly whispers tell
> 
> That joy, once lost, is pain.”
> 
> Percy Shelley

Sherlock's smile fades as John simply continues to lie there on the cold floor, unmoving and still.

"John?"

He steps forward, but Harry is already there, kneeling beside her brother's prone form.

"Well," she breathes, looking up, "he's breathing, which is a far sight better than what we could've gotten…"

"Breathing?" Sherlock echoes, kneeling beside her. "He doesn't  _need_  to breathe, isn't that the whole point of –?"

"He's in a  _human_  body, Sherlock, of course he needs to breathe—" Harry huffs, flipping John onto his back.

Human?

Sherlock frowns, lightning snapping through his synapses before being lost in the unstoppable rush of… happiness. Relief, light and soft and warm. John was  _here_ , undeniably here.

He shuts his eyes, and doesn't stop the smile that curls at his mouth. Doesn't even try to stifle it.

Because it worked. This had  _worked_. It had been a complete shot in the dark, an unstable, unreliable, completely mad plan, all born on the shoulders of an hours-old angel who had a penchant for scotch and last minute planning.

Tentatively, with more care than he'd ever reserved for anything in his life, he reaches out and touches John's hand.

It is a miracle how the human body works. The energy expended just to lift a finger, or tug a tendon to twitch. The vast amount of incalculable difference between stillness and action, and the warmth infused intrinsically into skin and the cold firmness when it's all fled. The softness of a touch returned and the knowledge that it can be.

Sherlock touches him, and John's hand is  _warm_ , and Sherlock wants his being to fold into nothingness and surrender himself to the ether if it means he doesn't start crying. Because that is, intrinsically as the warmth in his palms, something he will  _not_  do.

"John. John,  _John_." He murmurs, oblivious to the room, to the other bodies in it next to him, to life outside this few feet of floorspace where John lies, entombing him in a pocket of overwhelming relief he's been sewn into.

He doesn't drop the hand he's holding, because how could ever let go now, and reaches with his right, tugging his glove off with his teeth, to run his thumb over bare cheekbone, philtrum dimple, bridge of a newly formed nose—just the same as it was before, how is it just the same—

A pulse of something that can only be called darkness reverberates around the room, silent but shaking him down to his bones. John's eyes open, but there is no  _John_  behind them, they are black, pupils blown to the edges, no comprehension, no nothing but John is back so who and what is this, this is John it must be  _John_ —

Another pulse, but it's an aftershock this time, fallout has already occurred, and this is the aftermath, lifting him off his feet, throwing them all backwards, even Gladstone.

He smacks against the marble and skids along the smooth floor, hearing Harry curse and Gladstone yelp in surprise. When he rights himself and staggers to his feet, John is standing there, but it is wholly not John—not with those eyes, not without any wings, not with a trace of kindness in his bones.

"Sherlock Holmes." He says, but with Nachash's voice, poisonous and airy in a way John's never was. "Thought I'd give your bird back to you. You don't mind if I taught Polly here some phrases, do you? And you," he turns to Harry and smiles. "I know some people who will very upset to find you missing."

"I was  _called for_ , you horse's ass." Harry replies.

"Yes, by a renegade angel, I seem to recall." Nachash sniffs, and upon glancing around the room, plays at surprise, John's eyebrow arching. "What? You didn't know? Johnny boy here skipped school without a note. He's AWOL, a runaway, all that. I got out first, and he followed me. He got a little dirty in the process. Harriet, dear, I wouldn't be able to do this if he was as pure as all the others, right?"

Harry says nothing, but she doesn't argue against him either, which says everything.

"Can't partake in Earthly delights, can we?" Nachash grins, then John's eyes roll back in his head and he collapses right as Harry begins to convulse and the darkness passes through the hall.

"That means," she says in Nachash's voice, "No booze—"

She shudders and crumples to the ground; John begins to shake as the room pulses, then stands and speaks once more with the demon's voice "—and no loving with mankind. Ooh, you've made Daddy quite upset, you know. Naughty children. Oh, what to do with you, what to do…" He taps at John's chin thoughtfully.

"Let him go." Sherlock rumbles, and those eyes he'd begged to see open turned to him.

"Sherlock Holmes. You just don't know when to give up, do you? John is  _mine_ , now, understand?"

He steps closer, and touches Sherlock's cheek softly, as if he was John instead of an imposter.

"I'm not letting this one go. Hmm? Not while he still loves you. Not while I can still suck him dry."

Sherlock doesn't flinch. He stares into John's eyes, past the falsity and into the soft truth.

"You can try." He says lowly, and Nachash laughs.

"Oh, you  _are_  fun, Sherlock. I see why Johnny likes you so much. Did you know in all that heat and death and rot he watched you for three whole decades? Not much time, considering, but still. He saw something in you. And you let him down, didn't you? You let me take him."

"Oh, go fuck yourself." Harry says, stepping up beside Sherlock. "You and your mind games can go bugger each other."

"Quaint as always, Harriet."

"You wanted something tonight. You knew we were bringing John back, so screw your games and all that shit, and tell us what you're here for so we can kick your ass already."

"Well, to be perfectly honest, I came here to scare you."

Harry rolls her eyes. "Something legitimate, please."

"I can assure you, _Harry_ , I only visited to strike fear into the hearts of your companions."

Mortimer speaks up now, loud against the echoing room. "You're trying to scare us? This fucking Scooby-Doo gang?" He shrugs. "Alright. Do your worst."

John grins and tilts his head as Nachash speaks. "I intend to."

The hall begins to rumble, faintly but just detectable. A roar rises from somewhere in the distance, and Mortimer catches Sherlock's eye. Angels might survive what they can throw at each other, but humanity is collateral damage.

"The Molossian Hound." John sighs, glancing at them. "Better get a move on, if I were you."

There's a great snort somewhere in the bowels of the museum, and somewhere the floor begins to crack under a great weight that gallops closer to them.

As it comes into view, Harry breathes out quietly among them "Oh shit."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay! Life gets in the way of some things, unfortunately. Enjoy!


	23. dog park

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "And who are you, the proud lord said,  
> that I must bow so low?  
> Only a cat of a different coat,  
> that's all the truth I know."  
> 

Gladstone lowers his head and growls, his fur standing on end.

The beast before them is huge. Undeniably so. Big. Massive. A tonne of marbled stone at least, full of taut density.

Worse still, it growls back.

“Trick of the trade.” John says with a grin that isn’t his. “Enjoy the dog park, lads.” He winks, before disappearing. No flash of smoke, no wings bursting forth, only…there one moment, and gone the next.

“There’s a lady here too, you know.” Harry mutters indignantly.

The hound roars. Their hound growls back. Sherlock fists a hand in his scruff.

"Gladstone." Sherlock calls and the wolf turns its head to him. "Attack."

Before his great head even turns back, he is upon the hound, biting and snarling with pent up wrath. He’s wanted this for a while. He’s been tamed, kept up inside too long. He’s needed a fight.

Not without sympathy, Sherlock turns to Harry.

“John—Nachash, where did he go?”

Harry stares at him, mouth agape. “How the hell am I supposed to know? We don’t exactly have a club, you know.”

“Is there a way you can find him?” He asks, not desperately because he is not desperate. John will be fine this time, he’s sure of it. He won’t make the same mistake twice.

Harry exhales, and shuts her eyes. After a few deep intakes, her breath hitches.

“It’s not much…just a feeling, really. I—I think he’s in a—a tunnel? Some sort of overpass where he can’t see the stars. It bothers him. There’s too much metal.”

Sherlock’s eyes close to the fight around him, mentally mapping the area, eliminating any impossibilities—although to an angel, what really is impossible and what is  _unlikely_  are two completely different things.

“Tramway…must be a tramway…” He doesn’t realize he’s muttering aloud, lost as it is in the snarls and biting of the battling canines.

Time seems to drain into one gathered knot, exisiting in this one moment of realization. Everything must have led up to this. He should have known…should have realized.

“I’ve got it.”

* * *

The ground is wet, gravel and mud mingling together in a murky state. He’s careful to avoid the puddles. Too obvious. Too dangerous. Nachash probably knows they’re here anyways.

Mortimer’s torch shines off the water, off the weeping stone walls damp with moss and mould, and finally rests on a bound figure in the centre of the tunnel. Pale in the bright light, pale on his own merit, with dark purple rings under his eyes, is John.

Sherlock plants himself in the ground, forcing himself to stay there. The next step will be his death. Or so he tells himself, if it will stop him from rushing forward.

John stirs, and looks up through bleary eyes.

“Sh—Sherlock? Is that you?” He squints, a wry tired smile coming to his face. “You look like shite.”

Sherlock takes a step. His death won’t stop him. That’s isn’t Nachash. He’s sure of it. It’s too easy, but it's

“ _John_.” He says with an exhale, “John…”

 _JohnJohn!John…johnjohn…john!john_ his heart stutters out, or perhaps he’s saying it out loud, because suddenly he’s kneeling before John, knee deep in muck and his hands full of face and jaw and flesh, and he’s never been happier, he’s never been more relieved that he’s gotten what he wanted.

“You don’t look any better.” He mutters into John’s neck, breathing in great gasps of air and stuttering exhales, savouring the low chuckle against his cheek. “I knew you’d come back.” He breathes. “I knew it. I knew it.”

“I told you I would.” John whispers, and then everything is wrong.

He stiffens, despite the arms around him. Where Sherlock’s palm rests, right above where the beginnings of John’s wings should be, a low shaking begins, the muscles beneath seizing up in a tight quivering coil.

“John?”

John bites back a low moan of pain, or perhaps it’s another laugh. Sherlock can’t tell, he  _can’t tell_ , and this is the worst state he can be in, this state of not knowing—

“He keeps trying.” John says through gritted teeth, head falling back as his eyes roll into his head. “Keeps wanting you. Sherlock. Sherlock, he wants  _you_. Not me. I was wrong. Not me.”

“John, no—he can’t have me, I’m not—he isn’t  _you_ , he can’t get to me.”

“Yes he can.” John wheezes, eyes opening and watery with pain. “Yes he can. He’ll keep using me to get you.” Then, what he never wanted to hear: “Kill me, Sherlock. You have to.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“Unacceptable. I won’t.”

“ _Yes._  You will. Or Harry. Just not this. Don’t leave me like this, where I can—I can hurt you. I can’t. I can’t—”

“Can you fight him?”

“You say that like I’m not trying.” John smiles, though it comes out more of a rueful grimace, wrought with pain and sweat beading at his temples.

John’s never sweat before.

Sherlock leans forward, brushing his lips at the light sheen, tasting salt and divinity.

“I’m not going to kill you.” He whispers at the bridge of John’s nose. “I can’t do a thing like that twice.”

“Not asking you,” John rasps, “I’m telling you. Just this once. For you. Can't be your end, Sh'lck.”

Sherlock draws away and looks down. John is not going to give up. John will not allow Nachash to win. There must be another way. There has to be.

“ _Harry_.” He calls out hoarsely, voice straining as John convulses once more in his arms. His sister comes forward in a rush of air, silent and present. “Do something.” He urges, as if his love is enough to stave off the inevitable.

Harry frowns, but moves forward and takes John’s head in her hands. His seizure flares, shaking the seat to its foundations as he struggles against what can only be the source: Nachash.

Mortimer is beside her in an instant, digging into his satchel and producing an old splintered crucifix. Sherlock side-eyes it, but shakes the notion off. His critique of Mortimer’s methods will come another time. If it brings John wholly back to him, he doesn’t care how. He doesn’t care.

Mortimer pierces his thumb and presses a bloodied print onto John’s forehead, muttering something Sherlock recognizes as Latin, but it’s older than anything he’s heard before, and he loses it into its cadence.

John arches against his binding, muscles taut against every inch of skin, but he isn’t screaming yet.

“Since we brought him here, he isn’t all Nachash’s to control.” Harry whispers beside him, both their eyes fixed on her brother.

“Does it hurt?”

“Being controlled? Yes.” She answers softly. “I can’t tell you what it’s like. It’s horrible. It’s…I can’t describe it. There’s no pain outside of what you feel. It hurts because you know it shouldn’t.”

“Is this hurting him now?”

“I don’t know.” She says meekly, in a tone he’s never heard from her. The tone of the long-suffering watching another episode and feeling a pervading sadness worse than the offending grief. The tone of someone watching someone they love die, and being used to it.

Mortimer finishes, and John is still, though dragging deep gasps of breath.

“What did you do?” Sherlock asks, not without a quiver in his own voice.

“I Linda Blair’d him.” Mortimer shrugged. “Good old Catholic prayer. Nothing like it, eh?”

“No,” A voice says from behind them, “Nothing like it.”

Harry shines the torch towards the entrance and Mortimer relaxes.

“Irene,” He grins. “What brings you here?”

“You forgot to turn off your phone.” She replies, stepping into the dim light.

She looks at John, now unconscious. Sherlock tries not to hate her.

She smiles.

“Where’s the party, lads?”

“Not with you.” Harry mutters.

Sherlock isn’t listening. He’s beside Mortimer, who has started working at the knots behind John’s back. He leans forward, intent on helping, and his lips brush Mortimer’s cheek.

“Did you know she was coming?” He asks.

“No.” His friend answers. “But we can trust her.”

“Are you sure? Answer as yourself, not her lover.”

A pause.

“Yes.” He breathes against Sherlock’s temple. “She’s logical. Calculating. But she’s ours.”

“You’d better be right.” Sherlock answers as the knots come loose. Shrugging the rope off, he guides John into his arms and Mortimer stands, recognizing the moment, to greet Irene.

“John.” He sighs into an unhearing ear. “I’ve got you.”

For how long?

John grumbles back, and Sherlock traces his ribs, burying his nose into the once-angel’s neck.

For now. For now.


	24. furling

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter marks the beginning of an nonlinear narrative, so buckle in, we're going on a weird ride. I'll try to make it clear what happens when in coming chapters. Apologies for the wait.

**Three Days Later…**

Morning dawns cold against the walls, the blue of retreating night diving into a deeper hue until it begins to lighten, filtered through heavy grey clouds that blot out the weak sun. The smell of roasting coffee permeates the air, lying thick over vague traces of reheated food and gunpowder.

“I’m going to try again.”

A heavy sigh, long ago resigned to immovable behaviour, followed by a quiet concession. “I won’t stop you, but he won’t change his mind, Gregory.”

“I’m not asking him to, I just want to—to—I don’t know. I don’t want him to be like this. I don’t like it. It’s not healthy.”

“I don’t like it any more than you do, but I know my brother. He won’t budge. Not about this. Not about him.”

“I know, just—this is awful, just  _waiting_ , and for what? John might never—”

They stop, interrupted as the bedroom door opens. Sherlock, haggard, tired, and unkempt, steps out, shutting the door softly as if he doesn’t want to disturb what lies beyond the threshold; as if the slightest infraction will cause everything to topple.

“Sherlock…” Mycroft begins, but his brother sweeps past him without a word, wrinkled robe billowing outwards, as he digs through the cabinets below the sink, rifling through a mess neither of the other men has the fortitude to look at.

“Sherlock, this behaviour is getting out of hand, I insist, you must eat something—”

Sherlock finds what he was looking for, a glass mixing bowl, and shoots his brother a glare before turning the tap on and filling the bowl full of water.

“I know you think that your actions are helping John, but the man is—”

“He’s not a man.” Sherlock answers, his voice hoarse and creaky from disuse.

Mycroft meets his gaze steadily. “Yes, he is now. And you know that.”

Sherlock leans against the wall and turns his head to stare ominously at the cabinets, as if all the wrong that’s been done to him have been their fault. His curls are starting to take on the oily sheen of unwashed hair and stale sweat. The dawning light creeps through the window behind him, illuminating his face, and the fact that the shadows there have become sharper is not lost on either visitor.

They say nothing in the wake of rushing water. The bowl fills to the rim and Sherlock lets it overflow for a moment before reaching out slowly to turn it off, as if the pillar of water sucks his concentration down the drain with it. It seems for a moment as if he can barely muster up the energy to turn the tap off.

Thinner fingers wrapping around it, he lifts the bowl out and away, sweeping back to his room without a word, shutting the door just as softly as before.

Greg sighs enough for the both of them, one hand coming up to rub at his face. “How long has it been since he’s last eaten?”

“Two days and seventeen hours.”

“Right.” He nods, and then nods again. “Right. Sod this, I’ve had it—”

He brushes past Mycroft and gives the door a peremptory knock before stepping into Sherlock’s bedroom.

The hush of the morning stills the air, the rising street sounds barely trickling inside. The room is dark, with only a solitary lamp turned on, casting long shadows filtered through the watered-down morning light over the walls.

Sherlock is sitting on the opposite side of the bed, having set the bowl of water on the bedside table as he dips a damp flannel into it. The lamp, bolted to the wall, casts its light over John’s face, peaceful in sleep as he rests on Sherlock’s bed.

Not receiving a dismissal or any verbal abuse, Lestrade takes a step in and shuts the door.

“No change?” He asks gently.

Sherlock shakes his head and says nothing, wiping the flannel slowly over John’s arm, easing the water over dry and heated skin.

“Look, Sherlock, not eating won’t help John—” Upon Sherlock’s scoff, he continues “ _And_  I know how you must be feeling. You don’t want to leave him for a second if it means he wakes up. I understand. But punishing yourself like this doesn’t do anyone any good, most of all you.”

“Coddling—” Sherlock starts then swallows at the dryness of his throat. “Coddling gets me nowhere either.”

“We aren’t  _coddling_  you, Sherlock, we’re making sure you stay healthy! Whatever’s happening to John now isn’t as bad as what’s happening to  _you_. He may not be…whatever he was before, but he’s not like us either. Remember what you told me about the museum? How Nachash possessed him? Harry said he couldn’t do it to you, so—so John’s still not all human. He doesn’t need to eat like you do. He hasn’t wasted away like you have. So please, for Christ’s sake, eat something. Anything of caloric value will do. A biscuit, some toast, whatever you think you can stomach…”

Sherlock takes so long to answer that Lestrade fumbles for a more convincing argument.

“Crêpes.”

“Pardon?”

“I would like crêpes.”

“Crêpes.” Greg’s brow shoots up in surprise at such an easily conceded compromise. “Okay, well, I—uh—I’ll get on that.”

“Throw in blackberries if we’ve got them.”

“Blackberries, right. I’ll—yeah. I’ll go do that. Thank you Sherlock, I—you’re doing the right thing. John would want you to eat.”

Sherlock doesn’t answer, gaze glued to John, and Lestrade is too grateful that he’s won to care for a response.

He leaves, closing the door on a scene of grief he never wants to live through.

* * *

 

 **Two Days Earlier** …

“Still nothing?”

“No.”

Harry shuts the door and comes to stand beside him, Sherlock’s arms crossed tightly beneath his chest.

“Why would Nachash give him back to us then leave him like this?”

“Is that what you think happened?”

“Yes? Why, is that wrong?”

He sits in his chair at the foot of the bed and steeples his fingers. “Deduce. Tell me what you know about this, John and Nachash. What does he want? Why John?”

Harry frowns. “Well, he’s a megalomaniacal egoist  _and_  a total bellend, so there’s that. He got out of Sheol, so I’m assuming ultimately he wants to not go back, like the rest of us. He wants to conquer to keep him in power here, and he thinks John can help him do that, or the John that came to you can help him do that.”

“How?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know. All of our kind is cut from the same cloth with the same type of power, but we’re different enough to be ourselves. John is loyal, he’s brave, he’s a fighter. He’d be a good soldier in Nachash’s war, maybe the best one.”

“So why send Azazel after him? Why attack him and present himself as an enemy when indoctrination is so much easier, especially for him?”

Harry falls silent, thinking as she stares down at her brother.

“Because he wanted him out of the way?”

“No.” Sherlock answers solemnly. “It’s because he fears him, and he fears what I am to him.”

“What’s that?”

Sherlock pauses for a moment, thinking. “I am a…vicious motivator. John has been especially  _protective_ of me. Nachash wanted to antagonize him, get a reading of the depth of our relationship and make him angry, make him fight to his fullest potential. He brought John back to prove that he could. It’s all a game, and what’s happened until now has only been a prologue. He’s going to return soon with the feature presentation.”

“What will that be?”

Sherlock’s silence is enough to answer.

Harry sighs, and looks between the two of them, from her brother to his all.

“You ever think of buying larger shirts?” She asks, eyeing the straining buttons.

“John shrunk them when he did the washing one day.” Sherlock answers coolly.

“So what’s stopping you from buying more?”

He reaches down and rights the upended duvet corner before straightening up.

“Sentiment.”


	25. floating

_Water_.

There had been so much, everywhere. It had been all around, all-consuming, like fire. He had been so sure he would drown in it all, in the dark depth down there, a depth that surpassed the mud and the reeds and the murk. The darkness that never had a name, so unimaginable was its existence.

_John_

It all was ice, right to the bone. He’d never felt such a lonely cold, so cut adrift in bleak nothingness, unaware of himself or of anything else. He wanted to fold into his soft parts, into the warmth tucked into the corners of him, and become nothing, if it meant an end to this.

_John_

His stomach cramped against the chill, the cold sting of it pervading him to the core. He would cry, if he remembered how.

_What are we to do with you now?_

The darkness deepened, took on a new tone of depth, and he suddenly felt his loneliness recede into a rising fear. He had been wrapped into a crystalline hurt, and something had spoken to him down there in the dark. It had known his name. It rung in his ears like a percussion blast, radiating through his skull in an unrelenting, inescapable drone.

_Traitor. Coward. Wretch._

He couldn’t stop falling. He had no body, nothing but thought. He couldn’t scream. He couldn’t see. He was in suspension, trapped in the dark, terrified and alone.

_You abandoned your own kind._

Pain, now. Pain, in his shoulder. Something had pierced him, cut to the quick, there in the black. In the midst of nothingness, he’d been given a body to feel the pain being delivered to him.

_And for what purpose? You surrendered immortality for a mortal. The human._

Something itched at the back of his consciousness, something that he should be remembering, on the tip of his tongue, if he’d had one.

 _Sherlock Holmes_.

In the dark, there was light. A million images before him, a thousand thoughts, gravitating around the orbit of one man, pulled into the centre of his being, right near his heart. His smiles—unclassifiable—and his laugh, his mannerisms, his face his face his face—

 _You saved him. Sacrifice dictates selflessness. You would have been fallen without this act. In turn, he has saved you_.

The light becomes tainted, dulls like an eclipse, becomes like the blindness that comes after the sun. He has stopped falling, but he remains motionless. Floating.

 _You will return. Nachash lives still. You will return, and stop him, or pay with your life. So it is now stated_.

He feels himself rising. Feels the darkness shrink away, fall back behind him as it recedes into itself like some whipped beast.

The light grows bright, sharper. Closer.

With one rush of air, he surfaces.

His body feels as if it’d been ground up then hastily cobbled back together, all sharp angles and aching, with a weight he’d never quite felt before. A certain heaviness that pervaded his bones, made them like lead, full of something with a dense, hot mass. A dying star taking him down with it.

When he feels as if he can stand it, he opens his eyes blearily against the bright light near his head. He blinks once, twice. Flinches against the sudden movement near him and the sour warm breath on his face, whispering his name.

He blinks and croaks out:

“ _Water_.”

* * *

**Present**

They only need one glance towards Sherlock, flying out of his room with wild hair and wild eyes, to know what’s happened.

“Sherlock—” Mycroft begins as his brother passes him.

“Water.” He answers hurriedly, filling a glass from the tap as if urging the water to run faster. “He needs water.”

With that, Sherlock retreats back into the room, leaving the door open as Gladstone trots in after him, tail wagging at the excitement. Greg can see him from the hall, leaning over what must be John, and the light cast over his face reminds him of a painting he once saw. It had been of something easily forgotten, an angel looking towards Christ or some other divine thing, but in that moment it’s all he can think of. Sherlock is looking at John like he’s saved him from some unearthly suffering. Like John’s his deliverance.

“He’ll ask for Harry.” Mycroft says softly beside him.

“Shit.” Greg runs a hand through his hair. “I forgot about that. Do you think we should tell him?”

“‘Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and truth.’” Mycroft responds, pursing his lips as he glances toward his brother. “John will know eventually. I do not believe Sherlock possesses the callousness to lie to him. Not anymore.”

They watch in silence as Sherlock sets the half-empty glass on the nightstand, the other hand out of view, stroking back John’s hair, murmuring things that can’t be heard past the threshold.

“No.” Greg agrees. “Not anymore.”

* * *

 

He looks older.

It’s a thought that’s been nagging at him since John came back. He’s told himself that it doesn’t matter, John is _here_ , that’s what matters, but the fact remains: John has suffered.

It’s written all over his face.

_“John is mine now…”_

The wear of a new body being battered by possession. It amazes him how unchanged John looks. He’d assumed, wrongly, that corporeal form was subjective to each existence. John looks like John.

The scar, however, is new. Right in the curve of his left shoulder, where his arm begins. It’s a jagged round thing, pink and uneven, moreso in the exit wound on his back. It makes him ache to touch it, but that doesn’t stop him from running his fingers over it.

 _“He’ll keep using me to get to you_.”

He woke briefly an hour ago. Asked for water. He’d already tried to lay him in a lukewarm tub full to the brim, and had asked Greg for help putting him back to bed, as asleep as he’d ever been. He couldn’t look into his brother’s eyes and see the gleam of pride at being correct. Mycroft was wrong. John was back. He’d been right.

He’d been right.

He runs a thumb over John’s temple, taking a long and shaking breath. It was so easy to start imagining if things had gone wrong. Hypotheticals were all he had to remind him of how lucky he was, how lucky they all had been. Until John woke permanently, until he was up and talking and Johning the particular way he did, there was still the chance Nachash could get to him. There may always be a chance. There would always be the lingering fear of Damocles’ sword, of the pain of helpless love waiting to crush him. He would be reminded of the fact that in John’s suffering he would always be an outsider.

He reaches down to take John’s hand in his.

He could wait a little longer. He’d done it enough by now.


	26. a persuing

* * *

**Two Days Earlier**

* * *

 

“Can you stop that?” Harry asks, shooting a glare towards the passenger seat.

Mortimer takes a louder sip from his tea in response.

“Sherlock said you study angels for a living. I could smite you right here, so stop being such a tosser and you’ll not be a pile of ash by the end of the day.”

“I am a  _hunter_  for a living; theology is more of a hobby. And you need me.”

“I’m tolerating you at best.”

“Toleration is a stepping stone to necessity.”

Harry stares at him blankly for a moment. “Whatever. I don’t have time for you right now.”

“Where’d you learn to drive anyways? I don’t reckon Sheol has a DSA.”

“Your mechanics are simple here. I can’t really explain it…it’s like pulling the blinds or opening a door; it’s very easy to understand.”

Mortimer pauses a moment, pursing his lips in thought. “Do you have engineering where you’re from?”

“No—”

“So how do you know what it is? How do you know what anything here is? If Sheol is all heat and darkness, how do you even know who  _John_  is—”

Harry bangs her head against the wheel in frustration. A woman walking her dog past them jumps as the ground quivers.

“I don’t know!” Harry bursts. “I’m not John! I don’t have all the answers, I can’t spell it out for you like he does…just,” she takes a deep breath, steadying herself, “just don’t expect too much from me, okay? I’m not John. I—I’m not John.”

Mortimer, looking to all the world unfazed, sucks in his cheek and shrugs. “All right. Apologies, I didn’t mean to offend.”

“You didn’t.” Harry says, shaking her head, but at herself or her situation he can’t tell and doesn’t want to ask. “I’m—well I’m a little stressed right now.”

“I’ll say.”

“Sorry.”

“Unnecessary.” Mortimer answers, waving her words off. “I’ll shut up now.”

“Thank you.” She says gratefully, and he mimics zipping his mouth shut, popping the imagined key into his drink.

They sit in silence, letting the outside noise fold into the tiny car. A brisk wind brushes through the open windows, bringing with it the smell of exhaust, chatter, and baking bread. One of the things Harry has enjoyed most has been conversation, however unpleasant it seems to her now. People talking to each other has become cloaked in a soft and warm appreciation for her, if only because she’s never heard it before. No one and nothing before had ever talked about the weather or argued over sports or laughed together at a meal. This and everything else is a constant source of astonished fascination. She’d never have imagined it existed, that these irrelevant, insignificant, everyday things could be shared and spoken of so freely. Before, it had been a long suffering darkness. Now, it has become an ever-fresh gloss of sunlight. Everything is new, and everything has taken a peculiar shade of beauty.

She’s watching two shopkeepers bicker about the price of apples when Mortimer nudges her.

“Look.” He says, nodding as he leans forward to put his cup down.

She does. A man is staring at them from a street corner ahead. He looks quite ordinary, a bit short for his age, young, and well-dressed. His eyebrow arches in their direction and he waves a little condescending wave, as if he’s mocking their stakeout.

The hairs on her neck rise, and she couldn’t say with certainty why. He gives her the creeps, as if he’s staring right into her being, right into what she is, and he does so with a great disdain. She stares back at him, and realizes why.

He hasn’t blinked.

“Fuck.”

She starts the motor and the car rumbles to life. Quickly glancing out into the street, she turns out of the space. As they pass the corner, the man is gone.

“Who was that?” Mortimer asks, looking into his side mirror. The man is back for a moment, but after a passing tree blocks his view, he disappears again.

“Not who I think it is, hopefully.” Harry answers, taking a sharp turn into a side street.

People blur past them in whirls of colour and fleeting images, and for a moment Mortimer glances out and sees the man once more, waving at them. In the next moment, however, he is nowhere to be seen.

“Nachash?” He says, the only being that comes to mind who could make Harry so nervous.

“Damn!” She slams on the breaks, stopping at a red light.

“Can't you just run it? What if he catches up?”

“It doesn’t matter where we go. He’ll find us.”

“You’ve got that right.” A voice behind them says, low and lilting, and when Mortimer glances in the mirror, the man smiles at him from the backseat.

“Holy  _fuck_ —!” He shouts as Harry speeds through the light to the blaring horns of irate drivers. In the blink of an eye, the man is gone again.

“ _CAN HE FUCKING STOP DOING THAT_?!” Mortimer shouts, hands running through his hair. “ _JESUS_.”

“He’s having too much fun with you.” Harry says, her voice calmer than the situation calls for. “You need to calm down. Don’t fear him. He thrives on it.”

“That’s fucking easy for you to fucking say, you’re a  _fucking angel_!”

“He can kill me just as easily as you, James, but you’re making it fun. He gets messy when he’s having fun.”

“Okay, just…” He takes a deep breath and exhales. “Jesus, just give me a moment.”

“He’s not here right now,” the voice says again, right in his ear, “but I’ll be happy to assist.”

Mortimer glances over, and in Harry’s place is the man—Nachash—smiling at him and waving.

“Come  _on_ , man, give me a break!” His fear has soured into exasperation and he throws two fingers towards the demon. “Fuck off, okay?”

“‘Fuck off’?! Fuck you very much, I’m trying to save your sorry arse!” Harry shouts at him, as if she had never been gone, her eyes madly on the road as she swerves in and out of the lane.

“No, not you,  _he_  was here—Nachash was here, right where you were—”

“Okay, that’s it—” Harry sighs angrily, spinning the wheel wildly before they come to rest in a perfectly parked parallel space.

As the car rocks to a stop, they both take a long, steady breath in.  Heart beating a crazed staccato, Mortimer shakily reaches down, grabs his tea, and takes a deep sip.

“Still doubt my driving?” Harry asks in a brittle voice, and he can’t help but laugh.

“No. I do doubt my grip on reality though.”

“You’re in for a wild ride then.”

“I’m good, actually. Had enough of that today.”

“Come on,” Harry says, unbuckling her seatbelt, “we’ve got work to do.”

“I don’t think I can get up right now. Come back for me later.”

She rolls her eyes, and shoves the door open. Striding around to the other side of the car, she reaches out to open Mortimer’s door, only to find it locked.

“I’m serious.” He says. “Come back for me later.”

She raises an eyebrow, looks down, and the lock pops up as the door opens on its own.

“Fat chance.”

Mortimer groans as she pulls him out of the car. “Can I at least finish my tea—?”

“You could’ve done that when you were busy screaming.” She answers, lifting the trunk open and grabbing a worn-out duffel bag. “Do you have everything in here?”

“Yeah, should be all there.”

Harry strides off without another word, locking the battered car with the key over her shoulder. Mortimer follows wordlessly, catching up to her as they set off down the street.

“You know,” Harry reflects after a moment, “the craziest thing about that was that you weren’t even wearing a seatbelt the whole time…”

A low series of disapproving tutting sounds from behind them and they whirl around.

“I expected better from you two. Safety first.”

Harry’s curse is the last thing he hears.

Irene’s face is the last thing he sees.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 21 now and forever after. Wine City, population: this moi.


	27. Revisited

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thought I'd end my hiatus with a little treat for you guys.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "So leave everything you've stolen that you can't give back  
> And don't replace what you've been missing until you know what you're lacking  
> Leave everything you've borrowed and kept for yourself  
> You can’t unbreak our broken leases holding on to broken pieces, so return them!  
> No guilt, no sorry speeches!"
> 
> The Antlers - Revisited

When Sherlock asks, John stares blankly at the wall and doesn’t respond.

“I was being punished,” he says finally.

Sherlock is silent, allowing him the room to continue, but he doesn’t.

“Can…are you sure?”

John looks at him and his smile is sad at the edges.

“I’m human now.” He concedes, before quietly adding: “Mostly.”

That is the last thing he says for a while.

* * *

 

John has been unfailingly quiet.

Not that Sherlock expected it all to be rainbows and sunshine after what had happened, but he wasn’t ready for this.

Now that Lestrade and Mycroft have left, all the background noise followed, and it is as if John is still asleep. Sherlock wonders if angels can go into catatonic shock, or if it’s even something that John is capable of now, whatever he is.

There are great slabs of the day where everything is utterly silent and still. Sherlock will settle into the chair opposite of where John sits in the bed, awake but unmoving. The light will break over the horizon in the morning and move unbroken across him before the shadows begin to climb his face in the evening. He never blinks. Sherlock will get up, make tea, get a book, check his email, do _something_ to break this monotonous dredge as each hour blends seamlessly into the next, with nothing but sunlight to mark the time.

During the night, they live underwater. He manages to treat most of them as he would the day: make tea, read a book. But there are some nights that begin like the others—couched in the now-familiar blur of apathetic nothingness—that end differently. When the sun sets and the headlights begin to gleam through the windows, he marks his page and gets up. He shuts every light off in the flat. He unplugs all the clocks, tucks his laptop away. He turns on the bedside lamp beside John. He doesn’t look into his eyes much anymore. There’s nothing new to see.

There will be a moment in certain nights to distinguish them from the rest. He’ll be reading, and the words will begin to blur together. He keeps on reading, but not registering the words. The pages start to get heavy. His eyes shut for a moment, then open. He’ll look over at John, who sits unresponsive. Something will hurt in the heart of him, throbbing like a touched bruise somewhere deep. His lip will tremble, but he never knows why. Despondency laps at the edges of thought. He is overwhelmed by the idea that John might always be this way, and there’s nothing he can do to change it. He wonders if what he did was for the best, bringing John back. Wonders if he’s damned him to a crueller fate than whatever it was he came from. He asks himself if what he did even saved him from anything.

When this unhappiness crests over him—somewhere halfway through the night—he marks his page, gets up, and crawls in bed in the space next to John. He takes John’s slack hand in his, threads his fingers through. He puts the spot where their hands meet against his lips then shuts his eyes though he does not sleep.

He rests, but he never dreams anymore.

In the morning, more of the same.

* * *

 

“I have to go.”

John’s voice comes so suddenly in the silence, that Sherlock thinks he’s imagined it. His gaze snaps up, to where John’s turned to look at him.

_Go?_

Then Mycroft’s voice rises, when it was soft in the night, in the lapping water as he clutched at John’s body: _“Sherlock, let him go.”_

“Go where?” Sherlock asks, his voice hoarse with the memory of white knuckles.

“Away.”

“You already went away.” He responds as he shuts his book. “You’ve _been_ away this whole time.”

John’s eyes meet his, for the first time in a week. Sad. So sad.

John’s continued martyrdom has dredged up the bitters in whatever part of himself that he let them settle in.

“Your insistent desire to sacrifice yourself is very hard for me to witness.” He says quietly, and he hates how clinical he sounds. _John, you are not saving me. You are hurting me_. But that is too hard to say out loud.

“I have to go,” John repeats, though he doesn’t move, “You don’t understand—”

Sherlock stands, but he doesn’t know why. It won’t get his point across any more than sitting. “I don’t understand. What don’t I understand?”

John shuts his eyes.

He whispers: “I’ve ruined you.”

Sherlock stays where he is, and looks at the bedside table, crowded with cups of untouched cold tea that were his attempts at comfort for an unreachable grief.

“You _have_ ruined me.” He admits, “But I failedyou. I’ve dissolved you down to atrophy. Look at what’s become of you, John. You’ve barely spoken since you came back, I thought I broke you, I thought—I thought I did the wrong thing, bringing you back—”

The shadow behind John swells under the bedside lamp, growing into something large and formidable, growing _wings_ , as John’s face darkens.

“I will _always_ want to come back to you, Sherlock Holmes.” He says lowly. “Never doubt that. There will never be a day where I don’t want to be by your side.”

“But—you—John, you never talked to me, not once, how was I to know I hadn’t hurt you irrevocably in some way? Why didn’t you say anything?”

The shadow recedes, and John’s shoulders hunch. His strength seems to curl into himself.

“I told you, Sherlock, I ruined you. We were never supposed to meet. I trespassed on my own kind so I could see you, talk to you…be with you. I should never have come here.”

Sherlock’s stomach drops suddenly as his throat tightens. All that he and John ever were was a mistake. John said it himself.

 “I wanted you for myself.” John continues, unaware. “I coveted you, forced myself into your life. You didn’t deserve my affections. If I had never come, you could be living a normal life, a _safe_ life…”

“‘Safe’?” Sherlock spits out, grasping at his hair as he paces at the foot of the bed. “‘Safe’? I never wanted to be _safe_ , John! You should know that most of everyone! And what _normal_ life would a person like me have? A wife and 2.5 children with a picket fence out in Sussex? There is no normal for me, there wasn’t one before you and there won’t be one after!”

“After?”

John’s voice is brittle and hushed, like a frightened child in the night.

“After, yes.” Sherlock turns to him, eyes glistening in the solitary bright light. “You said you shouldn’t have come. You said you should go. Therefore, I will have to adjust to a life without you in it.”

“I don’t—Sherlock…” He pushes back the covers and stands. “I don’t want to leave you.”

“What do you want, John?” He says miserably, sinking back own into his seat. “Because I don’t think I can tell anymore.” He presses his palms against his eyes, seeing bursts of John’s afterimage. “You can’t go, and you can’t stay. So what do you want?”

“He came after you, Sherlock.” John murmurs, and he feels warm hands on his knees. “He came after you _through_ me. He will do it again. How can I stay?”

“He came after you as well.” Sherlock replies. “He _killed_ you, if memory serves. I thought you had died for me…but I still stayed for you.”

“You saved me…for the hundredth time. I’m supposed to protect you, Sherlock, that’s what I’m here to do—”

“I can protect myself, John! I did it well enough before you, and I can do it after if you think that you’re committing some gallantly sacrificial act of leaving me for my own good!”

“I don’t _want_ to leave you, Sherlock,” John argues back, desperation in his eyes, “I want you to survive! I want that more than I want to stay, even if it means that it’s better to know you’re safe alone than it is to know you’re dead because I loved you!”

Sherlock stops short, his argument dissipating and crumbling to bits.

He knew that already. He knew that John loved him; had known it since the beginning. So why was it so different now?

Somewhere deep down, he knew exactly why: he had forgotten. He’d doubted and second-guessed John’s love and been so burdened with his own discovered affections, still new and tender, and _‘_ _you’re an angel, John. You're supposed to love me. You're supposed to love everyone’_.

“You love me.” He says quietly.

“I do.” John answers staunchly. “And you love me.”

“No,” Sherlock shakes his head minutely and John frowns, “I am _in_ love with you.”

“Splitting hairs, Sherlock.”

“Necessary semantics.” He throws back.

“Fine. I am in love with you too.”

“So we agree, then.” Sherlock says, pursing his lips to keep the grin from emerging.

“We’re both in love with each other.” John replies, arms crossed.

“Tedious.”

“ _Wonderful_.” John corrects.

“Of course.” Sherlock amends. “ _Wonderful_.”

Outside, the night descends into a new day, following the same path it always has. The traffic of London filters through the window, frosted over with dew, as it always has.

John reaches a hand out, shouldering the burden that Sherlock was afraid to lift. Sherlock takes it, threading his fingers through John’s. He brings him forward, or perhaps John takes the step on his own, as he was afraid to do before. Perhaps something held them both from this before, but it is gone now. Perhaps John is more human, or Sherlock more otherworldly. But where there once was hesitation, now there is certainty.

Sherlock wraps an arm around John, holding him close. His fingers tighten over their joined hands, his forehead rests on John’s. The watery sunlight begins to slant through the curtains, onto the space on their cheeks where it once found one face, resting blankly on the bed.

They are in tandem now, moving with each other. John’s hand touches his face, brings him close. Breathes softly against his jawline, nudges his nose to the side. He murmurs something inaudible against Sherlock’s skin, and then their lips touch and there’s no need for words anymore.

The sun rises, as it always has. The day begins, as it always has.

They melt together, as they always have.


	28. paradise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for everyone who waited

Slim fingers nudge at the ridges of his spine. He flinches at the contact, the cool touch tickling his bare skin.

"Stop it..."

The fingers persist, running softly over the base of his neck. Gooseflesh rises, prickling upwards at the intimate touch.

" _Sherlock_. What have we said about consent?"

"I hardly think it counts, John." Says the voice nestled into his shoulder. "You've been very consenting thus far."

John can't suppress his smile, rolling over as he turns to face the man beside him. Sherlock's hands move to cover his shoulder, tracing the round scar on his shoulder. He leans forward and presses a kiss to it, his lips soft against the rough and uneven tissue. John noses into his hair, slowly inhaling the sweet, earthy scent as he kisses Sherlock's temple.

"I can still taste you, what you're feeling, even after my…well, whatever happened to me." He murmurs into the soft curly down. "It's like…mint, clear air, snow…bliss. Pureness. You feel happy."

Sherlock looks up at him, resting his chin on John's collarbone. He smiles, unguarded and genuine, one of those rare sights that even John can count on one hand.

"I _am_ happy."

John leans down, kisses him softly, his hands tracing patterns over the curve of Sherlock's lower back. Sherlock hums lowly, pressing forward as his tongue lines the seam of John's mouth, but just as soon as he advances, he retreats, breaking away to press his face into the curve of John's neck.

He sighs, and John closes his eyes, feeling his warm breath against his skin. They lay there together, in silence and revelry, in the moment that seemed so inevitable yet so long in coming. The path they had taken to bring these quiet minutes into realization had been full of yawning unknowns, great pits stretching before them, but the first step had revealed a ground more solid than frightening, a reward worth the sacrifice.

John thumbs against Sherlock's arm, tracing a circular path. That's all they were: a circle. Always in motion, neverending. Sherlock raises his head to rest on his chest, staring at the wall.

"Hey, come back to me."

Sherlock makes a noise of acknowledgment, but his eyes are still far away, concentrating on something John can't understand. He waits a moment, letting all his thoughts coalesce.

"What are you thinking about?"

Sherlock's fingers tap against his scar absentmindedly, in a way that brokers no argument on what his mind has settled on. When he speaks, his voice is quiet, reflective in a way that John hasn't quite heard before, in shades of something that sounds like uncertainty.

"What happens now?" He asks.

John chuckles. Sherlock can feel the vibration throughout his head, right to brain.

"Like you want all your questions answered." He says softly, words from long ago, before all of this. When they met.

Sherlock turns to look at him—really _looks_ at him—and whatever he sees there makes him relax. He lets his head fall back to John's chest.

"There is something that's been bothering me." John confesses, and Sherlock can hear his heart quicken. His _heart_. Such a new and novel thing, that he might hear John's heartbeat where once there was none.

"Mmm. Speak."

"I never got to fly with you, did I? I know I promised."

 _That's what he was worried about_?

Sherlock pushes himself up, his elbows coming to either side of John as he stares down at him. The coverlet billows around them, the heat from their bodies rising into the cool room. The light of the morning crosses his face as he reaches down to touch John's face, grazing his fingers against his lips.

"Hmm. Not to worry." He smiles. "There are other ways."

* * *

Sherlock wakes to raised voices just outside his bedroom. He rolls over, reaching for a body that is no longer there, the sheets long-cold and empty. Groggily, he grabs his watch off the nightstand. Almost noon—a very indulgent lie in.

He untangles himself from the bed, feet on the cold floor as he shrugs his thin dressing gown on, though he'd rather forgo it altogether. Something that sounds suspiciously blonde and good tells him they have guests who would most likely appreciate not being greeted with six feet of naked, thoroughly-shagged detective. _Propriety_ , thy name is John.

The voices grow louder as he steps out into the hall, coming from the parlor. John's voice, standing out among them all.

"What do you mean they're _gone_?" He's saying as Sherlock crosses the threshold.

Mycroft and Lestrade turn to look at the new arrival. His brother's brow raises, but he says nothing. The news must be bad, then, for him to pass on the offer of such low-hanging commentary.

His eyes meet John's.

"Harriet and Mortimer are missing." John tells him, his face full of worry.

Sherlock glances away, passing over his brother, though he can't bring himself to look at John either.

"I know." He says finally.

"You _know_? You mean—you _knew_ they were gone? This whole time?"

"Not this whole time, John, that's ridiculous. Don't think I'd hide that from you—"

"Then why am I just finding this out now?" John asks, looking to each of them. "You all knew, and no one thought to tell me?"

"I had more pressing concerns, and it's not like you were in a fit state to answer me if I had!" Sherlock responds, feeling color rising to his cheeks. His body knows he isn't telling the whole truth.

John exhales deeply, a still and somber expression falling over his face, the one that Sherlock hates seeing because it means he's made up his mind and decided to be the hero, alone.

"Right. I'm going out." He says, turning and heading back to their room, where the majority of his clothes are, have been since before he left and returned.

"John—" Sherlock starts, following him down the hall.

He's already shrugged a jumper on, looking around for a coat.

"Don't stop me, Sherlock."

"I'm not stopping you, you absurd man. I'm coming with you."

"What?" He asks, pulling on an old leather jacket. "No. Out of the question."

He moves to exit the room, but Sherlock's there first, shutting the door with a long arm.

"Why? Why does it always have to be you? Why do you _always_ go alone?"

_Why do you never take me with you? Why are you always running away?_

"Sherlock, if it were Mycroft—"

"Oh, don't even insult us both with the comparison, John, you know very well that I understand the situation just as well as you do. I know what Harriet is to you, and Mortimer as well." He pauses a moment and the bristled irritation falls from his voice, softening. "Let me go with you."

John stares at him for a moment, eyes darting over his face.

"No."

"Why? Because you think I could get hurt? Because I could die? I have news for you John, and I'm sure you've realized it: you've already done that to me. You've already been hurt for me, fought for me, died for me…don't you think I would want the same?"

"That's the thing, Sherlock. I came back. I don't think you get a second chance."

"I'm willing to take that risk."

John laughs, hollow and mirthless. "Of course you are. But what if I'm not?"

Sherlock almost says what he's thinking: _too bad_. But he doesn't, for once listening to his own better judgment. He hesitates, searching for the words that will make John believe him, and he knows that he can't plan the right words any more than he can convince John that the way he feels is real and genuine. If John could die, then there is no world left that Sherlock wants to be in. He _must_ know this; he has to.

"You told me that there will never be a day when you don't want me at your side. You know that I feel the same way—you _must_ know how I…that I love you."

Oh, how he wishes he told him in any other setting other than this one, half-dressed and dangerous. He takes his hand from the door, certain now that John won't run.

"Since I love you," he continues, licking his lips, "you are in a truly unique position to know that someone like me isn't going to let you go so easily. I brought you back, John. You have to know that there isn't anything I wouldn't do for you, for us. I'm not going to feel like this ever again, about anyone else. You're it. You know that. Only an idiot would think I wouldn't follow wherever you went."

He steps forward, his chest almost touching John's, who's looking up at him with some unfathomable expression, wide-eyed and endless, too deep for him to peer into and know with certainty what it was; very well, he'll take a guess: love.

"Let me go with you." He says softly, touching the side of John's face; John shuts his eyes. "I can help you...we're better together than apart, as I'm sure you've realized."

"Sherlock," John starts, leaning into his palm, "even if you did, even if I said yes, you have no way of fighting whatever might be waiting for you."

"That's rather pot meets kettle, don't you think?" He says lowly. "If we're meeting on mortal grounds, John, I'd say you haven't a leg to stand on."

"So we're just two humans going against an immortal, supernatural evil, then?"

"That's the idea."

"Brilliant." John deadpans, and Sherlock can see him losing faith in the future second by second.

" _But_ ," he adds, "with a good plan in place, who's to say we don't have just as good a chance as he does?"

John laughs at that, at the absurdity of their lives now, laughs at the sheer craziness of the man before him. Sherlock smiles, not letting his hand leave John's face, even as it fades.

"I'm here for you now, John. Say yes. Take me with you."

John looks at him. They both know he'd rather any other alternative, but this is the hand they've been dealt, and he knows now that whatever involves him will just as surely involve Sherlock Holmes.

"You're sure?"

He nods, leaning down to kiss him for a long moment, sweet and perfect. "I'm sure."

John kisses him back, something sharper, harder, lining his affections. Something hopeful and terrified.

"Come on, then. Let's end this."


End file.
